[Mb-civic] FW: Who Should Apologize to Whom?

Sun Mar 6 10:35:35 PST 2005

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 01:40:39 -0500
Subject: Who Should Apologize to Whom?

ARAB NEWS

Saturday, 5, March, 2005 (24, Muharram, 1426)

Who Should Apologize to Whom?
  Amir Taheri ‹

Where is the country that Bill Clinton, a former president of the
United States, feels ideologically most at home?

Before you answer, here is the condition that such a country must
fulfill: It must hold several consecutive elections that produce 70
percent majorities for ³liberals and progressives.²

Well, if you thought of one of the Scandinavian countries or, perhaps,
New Zealand or Canada, you are wrong.

Believe it or not, the country Bill Clinton so admires is the Islamic
Republic of Iran.

Here is what Clinton said at a meeting on the margins of the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just a few weeks ago: ³Iran today
is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast
constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are
defended by a majority.²

And here is what Clinton had to say in a recent television interview
with Charlie Rose:

³Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections
since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the
only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel,
including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have
won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for
president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties.
In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70
percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say
that about, certainly not my own.²

So, while millions of Iranians, especially the young, look to the
United States as a mode of progress and democracy, a former president
of the US looks to the Islamic Republic as his ideological homeland.

  But who are ³the guys² Clinton identifies with?

  There is, of course, President Muhammad Khatami who, speaking at a
conference of provincial governors last week, called for the whole
world to convert to Islam.

³Human beings understand different affairs within the global framework
that they live in,² he said. ³But when we say that Islam belongs to all
times and places, it is implied that the very essence of Islam is such
that despite changes (in time and place) it is always valid.²

There is also Khatami¹s brother, Muhammad-Reza, the man who, in 1979,
led the ³students² who seized the US Embassy in Tehran and held its
diplomats hostage for 444 days. There is Massumeh Ebtekar, a poor man¹s
pasionaria who was spokesperson for the hostage-holders in Tehran.
There is also the late Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, known to Iranians as
³Judge Blood².

Not surprisingly, Clinton¹s utterances have been seized upon by the
state-controlled media in Tehran as a means of countering President
George W. Bush¹s claim that the Islamic Republic is a tyranny that
oppresses the Iranians and threatens the stability of the region.

  Clinton¹s declaration of love for the mullas shows how ill informed
even a US president could be.

  Didn¹t anyone tell Clinton, when he was in the White House, that
elections in the Islamic Republic were as meaningless as those held in
the Soviet Union? Did he not know that all candidates had to be
approved by the ³Supreme Guide², and that no one from opposition is
allowed to stand? Did he not know that all parties are banned in the
Islamic Republic, and that such terms as ³progressive² and ³liberal²
are used by the mullas as synonyms for ³apostate², a charge that
carries a death sentence?

  More importantly, does he not know that while there is no democracy
without elections there can be elections without democracy?

Clinton told his audience in Davos, as well as Charlie Rose, that
during his presidency he had ³formally apologized on behalf of the
United States² for what he termed ³American crimes against Iran.²

  But what were those ³crimes²? Clinton summed them thus: ³It¹s a sad
story that really began in the 1950s when the United States deposed Mr.
Mossadegh, who was an elected parliamentary democrat, and brought the
Shah back and then he was overturned by the Ayatollah Khomeini, driving
us into the arms of one Saddam Hussein. We got rid of the parliamentary
democracy {there} back in the Œ50s; at least, that is my belief.²

Duped by a myth spread by the Blame-America-First coalition, Clinton
appears to have done little homework on Iran. The truth is that Iran in
the 1950s was not a parliamentary democracy but a constitutional
monarchy in which the Shah appointed, and dismissed, the prime
minister. Mossadegh was named prime minister twice by the Shah and
twice dismissed. In what way that meant that the US ³got rid of
parliamentary democracy² that did not exist is not clear.

There are at least two things that Clinton does not know about Iran and
Iranians.

  The first is that the claim that the US changed the course of Iranian
history on a whim would be seen by most Iranians, a proud people, as an
insult from an arrogant politician who exaggerates the powers of his
nation more than half a century ago. The second thing that Clinton does
not know is that in the Islamic Republic that he so admires, Mossadegh,
far from being regarded as a national hero, is an object of intense
vilification. One of the first acts of the mullas after seizing power
in 1979 was to take the name of Mossadegh off a street in Tehran. They
then sealed off the village where Mossadegh is buried to prevent his
supporters from gathering at his tomb. History textbooks written by the
mullas present Mossadegh as the ³son of a feudal family of exploiters
who worked for the cursed Shah, and betrayed Islam.²

Apologizing to the mullas for a wrong supposedly done to Mossadegh is
like begging Josef Stalin¹s pardon for a discourtesy toward Alexander
Kerensky.

  Clinton does not know that it was President Harry S. Truman¹s
energetic intervention in 1946 that forced Stalin to withdraw his
armies from northwestern Iran thus foiling a Communist attempt to
dismember the Iranian state.

  Clinton does not know that if anyone has to apologize it is the mullas
who should apologize to both the Iranian and the American peoples. He
does not appear to remember images of American diplomats paraded in
front of TV cameras, blindfolded, and threatened with summary execution
every day ‹ images that did lasting damage to the good name of Iran as
a civilized nation.

Speaking of apologies, Clinton also ignores the fact that Iranian
agents in Lebanon, led by the ³ liberal progressive² Ayatollah
Ali-Akbar Mohtashami, organized and carried out a string of terrorist
attacks in the 1980s that cost the lives of over 300 US citizens,
including 240 Marines.

  And does Clinton remember the dozens of American citizens who were
held hostage by the mullas¹ agents in Lebanon, sometimes for more than
five years?

Clinton forgets that anti-Americanism, and hatred of the West in
general, is the ideological backbone of Khomeinism; that that the
devise of the mullas¹ regime is ³Death to America², and that the
American flag is burned or trampled under foot in thousands of official
buildings throughout Iran every day?

Clinton claims that the mullas ³still kind of like the West in general,
and America in particular.² That must be as much news to the mullas as
to anyone else.

The former president endorses another claim of the mullas that Saddam
Hussein, the deposed Iraqi dictator, invaded Iran on behalf of the
United States.

Clinton says: ³Most of the terrible things Saddam Hussein did in the
1980s he did with the full, knowing support of the United States
government.²

  Don¹t be surprised if Clinton¹s next apology is addressed to Saddam
Hussein, another victim of American Imperialism!
---

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=59952&d=5&m=3&y=2005

------ End of Forwarded Message