We Are Not The Good Guys
There's a clip going around of Joy Reid on a CNN panel debating the roots of the recent American bombing of Iran. At one point Joy tries to push the panel to consider the 20th century roots of this conflict. She begins this line of inquiry by asking her fellow panelists why the Iran hostage crisis happened. One guests says that the crisis took place because "fundamentalist radicals took over the government," Joy pushes further and ask why that takeover happened. Two responses emerge–"because they're religious jihadis who want to eliminate western society" and "they hate our way of life." Joy then proceeds to give a rough summary of events in Iran since the coup d'etat in 1953, which was backed by America. Watching this portion of the exchange, I couldn't help but think that her co-panelists either were only lightly acquainted with the history of American intervention in Iran, or they didn't care. Perhaps it is both.
Anyway, this struck me because I'm still hung on something that became evident during my last book tour: there are a great many figures in American who make a living discussing foreign policy and and are deeply ignorant of the history which should inform those policies. Again, I suspect this ignorance is willful, and not incidental, for if the broad of punditry was informed, and spoke as such, I wonder if our most vaunted myths could stand. I want to take this argument at its most articulate:
“For all of our warts, the United States has clearly been a force for good in the world,” he said. “If you compare us to previous superpowers, we act less on the basis of naked self-interest, and have been interested in establishing norms that benefit everyone. If it is possible to do good at a bearable cost, to save lives, we will do it.”
I think this is probably not true. I'm only hedging because I never been to South America or Asia and my knowledge of their recent histories and interaction with the United States is basic. I don't believe the inherent nobility or evil of any human population and so there's no real reason for me to believe the American state is any less likely to act out of self-interest. Moreover, after my trip to Palestine, after seeing the wide between what was said (only democracy in the middle east), and what in fact was (apartheid), I lost of lot of faith in the narrative of statesmen that advantage their own state. Put bluntly I flew out of Tel Aviv I was left with one fundamental question: If I did not know we would do this, if I did not understand the depths of the evil we'd committed ourselves to, what else have I missed?
I think I'll spending the next few year finding out. I'm still struggle to articulate how much that trip deepened my politics in fundamental ways. I need to travel more. I need to read more. I need to know more, if only because it is clear to me that this America's narrators are nowhere near as objective as they imagine.
Anyway, Joy's short segment reminded that I needed to pick The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles And Their Secret World War. The Dulles brothers (the elder the head of the CIA, and the younger Secretary of State under Eisenhower) are notorious lead characters in the 1953 coup. And this is but one instance of their misdealing, malfeasance and national perfidy. This was tradition. The Dulles brothers's grandfather, John Watson Foster, was secretary of state for just eight months President Benjamin Harrison and still he managed to leave a familiar heirloom:
“History remembers John Watson Foster’s brief term as secretary of state for a singular accomplishment. In 1893 he helped direct the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. President Harrison had discreetly encouraged white settlers in Hawaii to rebel against Queen Liliuokalani, and when they did, Secretary of State Foster endorsed the landing of American troops at Honolulu to support them. The settlers proclaimed themselves Hawaii’s new government, the United States quickly recognized their regime, and the monarchy was no more.”
“The native inhabitants had proved themselves incapable of maintaining a respectable and responsible government,” Foster later wrote, “and lacked the energy or will to improve the advantages which Providence had given them.”
This made John Watson Foster the first American secretary of state to participate in the overthrow of a foreign government. Others would follow—including, more than a half century later, his grandson.”
The highlighted rhetoric is exceedingly familiar. The robber can never simply rob. The robber always need a reason.