 | | Democracy! Manufactured by Coca-Cola Atlanta-USA
When in 1979 the Shah of Iran, a puppet of America, was dethroned by the Iranian Islamic revolution under the leadership of Ayatollah Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini, known better as Imam Khomeini, the new leadership wrote in their constitution "The Constitution, having regard to the Islamic contents of the Iranian Revolution, which was a movement for the victory of all the oppressed over the arrogant, provides a basis for the continuation of that revolution both inside and outside the country. It particularly tries to do this in developing international relations with other Islamic movements and peoples, so as to prepare the way towards a united single world community ("Your community is one community, and I am your Lord who you are to worship") Quotation from the Arabic and to the continuation of the progressive struggle for the rescue of deprived and oppressed nations throughout the world". |
Having read this, the entire world was afraid of the nascent revolution for two reasons; the first being that it was lead by a religious group. Up to then in the 20th century, the world had been the stage for several revolutions, but they were mostly linked to communist or anarchist ideologies and led by the young. The Islamic Revolution, on the other hand, was led by people of all generations and from a religious perspective. This fact fed into the second reason, which was that the religious aspect would make it easier to spread to neighbouring countries and beyond.
After the success of this Islamic Revolution, the United States and Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf immediately joined forces to fight the Iranian Revolution. Israel and many other European countries were behind them. They wanted to destroy the Islamic Revolution in its infancy. Thus, Washington pushed Riyadh and Kuwait to establish the Gulf Co-Operation Council to bring these monarchies together in the face of the newly born Islamic Republic of Iran. At that time, these countries were too weak to offer effective resistance to the Iranian Revolution and US foreign policy was not in the habit of interfering overtly in military operations in the Middle East. The US therefore decided that someone else should do the dirty work for them. At that time they found in Saddam Hussein the salvation for their panic and motivated him to fight Iran. Of course, he had many reasons and interests to go for war with Iran, but the banner flown was that of protecting the Gulf countries and the USA under the slogans of having to neutralise "the threat of spreading the revolution" , or "the expansionist nature of the Iranian Islamic revolution" or stopping the "exportation of the revolution" at all costs.
The war started in September 1980 and ended in August 1988, resulting in either a win-win or a lose-lose situation, depending on your analysis. Throughout that war, the US had made its backing of Iraq more pronounced, supplying it with intelligence, economic aid, weapons and normalising diplomatic relations with the government which had broken down during the 1967 war.
Even when an Iraqi plane accidentally attacked the USS Stark, a Perry class frigate on 17 May 1987, killing 37 and injuring 21, the US did not pay much attention to this incident and continued focusing on isolating Iran. The US went as far as to let the USS Vincennes, a U.S. Navy cruiser shoot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 passengers and crew on board on 3 July 1988, just one month before the official end of the war. It is no secret that many Western countries and companies provided military support to Iraq and even components of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction program.
On 20 December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then a civilian and now US Defence Secretary, met with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support. In July 1984, the CIA began giving Iraq the intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. With more than 100,000 Iranian victims of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons during the eight-year war, Iran is, after Japan, one of the world's top afflicted countries by Weapons of Mass Destruction. Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalised with severe, chronic conditions. Many others were hit by mustard gas. In total, 308 Iraqi missiles were launched at population centres inside Iranian cities between 1980 and 1988 resulting in huge casualties.
There is great resentment nowadays in Iran that the international community not only did nothing to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran throughout the war but it actually helped Iraq develop its chemical weapons arsenal and armed forces. In fact, up to 1986, both the United States and Great Britain refused to let the UN Security Council take a position against the use of WMD by Iraq on Iran but on 21 March of that year, the US became the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons.
Yes, we are talking about the same Iraq that is now occupied by the US, 12 years down the line, featuring the same Saddam that was still in power during that fateful period. So why, all of a sudden after 12 years, did the Americans decide that Iraq is becoming a threat for international security and feel that they needed to stop them, thus going to war? After 12 years, the USA "discovered" that Iraq has Weapons of Mass Destruction and that Saddam is a dictator and the Ba'ath Party should be ousted out for its fascist nature and its lack of democracy. They went to war with reasons that changed according to their whims. The first reason was to strip Iraq of its Weapons of Mass Destruction- weapons they never found. The second reason was the need to oust out a dictator who abuses and tortures his own people and the latest reason was to democratise Iraq and make it a model to be copied by its neighbouring countries. "Exporting democracy" has become the favourite smokescreen of US foreign policy in the past few years. We just have to look at what has happened surrounding the Palestinian legislative elections for the most recent example. The US spent millions on encouraging Palestinians to partake in democratic elections even though still under Israeli occupation. When Palestinians questioned this, they got a reassuring answer that this is legitimate. So they had a democratic election, and Hamas won. Far from being happy with this "democratic" result, the US have initiated a campaign denouncing and isolating Hamas, as well as threatening to freeze all aid to Palestine.
A similar smokescreen has been pathetically projected as "real" in Iraq for some time. After the dictatorship crumbled and a "democratic regime" under the protection of US tanks was established, things went from bad to worse in "democratic Iraq" and a civil war started. Even until now, the Americans insist on ignoring that this is a civil war and claim that behind the war there are some terrorist Mujahedeen from neighbouring countries - their aim to act against the will of the people for a free and democratic Iraq. The irony, again, in this war is that only the US administration sees that things are developing in the right direction in Iraq and soon democracy will prevail, making Iraq a model for the entire region for a democratised society where Human Rights are respected and flourished. This "big achievement" of the US in exporting democracy is encouraging them to rage a similar war against Iran and Syria and maybe on a later stage with North Korea. Since, according to the US administration, the "mission has been accomplished" and it was an easy one, there is no obstacle blocking them and the NeoCons behind them to go further in exporting this kind of "democracy" to other "uncivilised regions" in the world. I would not bat an eyelid if Bush and Co. soon decide to open a new Coca-Cola product line, exporting democracy in sterilised bottles.
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