The U.S. Empire, the Mideast, and the world, part 5 ( Archived) (5)

From a talk by Noam Chomsky, June 2010

The Threat of Radical Nationalism

So in 1953, the Iranian threat was secular nationalism. After 1978, it's religious nationalism. In 1953, it was taken care of by overthrowing the parliamentary regime and installing a dictator who was highly praised. It wasn't a secret. The New York Times, for example, had an editorial praising the overthrow of the government as an "object lesson" to small countries that "go berserk" with radical nationalism and seek to control their own resources. This will be an object lesson to them: don't try any of that nonsense, certainly not in an area we need for control of the world. That was 1953.

Since the overthrow of the U.S.-imposed tyrant in 1979, Iran has been constantly under U.S. attack—without a stop. First, Carter tried to reverse the overthrow of the Shah immediately by trying to instigate a military coup. That didn't work. The Israelis—in effect the ambassador, as there'd been close relations between Israel and Iran under the Shah, although theoretically no formal relations—advised that if we could find military officers who were willing to shoot down 10,000 people in the streets, we could restore the Shah. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security advisor, had pretty much the same advice. That didn't quite work. Right away, the U.S. turned for support to Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran—which was no small affair. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were slaughtered. The people who are now running the country are veterans of that war and deep in their consciousness is the understanding that the whole world is against them—the Russians, the Americans were all supporting Saddam Hussein and the effort to overthrow the new Islamic state.

It was no small thing. The U.S. support for Saddam Hussein was extreme. Saddam's crimes—like the Anfal genocide, the massacre of the Kurds—were just denied. The Reagan administration denied them or blamed them on Iran. Iraq was even given a very rare privilege. It's the only country other than Israel which has been granted the privilege of attacking a U.S. naval vessel and getting away with complete impunity. In the Israeli case, it was the Liberty in 1967. In Iraq's case it was the USS Stark in1987—a naval vessel which was part of the U.S. fleet protecting Iraqi shipments from Iran during the war. They attacked the ship using French missiles, killed a few dozen sailors, and got a slight tap on the wrist, but nothing beyond that.

U.S. support was so strong that they basically won the war for Iraq. After the war was over, U.S. support for Iraq continued. In 1989, George Bush I invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in nuclear weapons development. It's one of those little things that gets hushed up because a couple of months later Saddam became a bad boy. He disobeyed orders. Right after that came harsh sanctions and so on, right up till today.

Why didnt you put it all onto one thread

Would have made more sense.

Welcome back. I'm sorry to say the line you think you've been in for Anti-American historians has been changed to the line for Alternate Thinkers of History with a Viewpoint favoring the American way of life. You will have to move over to the other side of the hall where the new line for Anti-American historians goes out the door and around the building in a counter-clockwise direction. (If you remember, the line you were on earlier went in a clockwise direction around the building.)

define win.

entire country bankrupt, desputed land which was pretext for war given to Iran and borders unchanged.



Considering that only one percent of Iraqi arms came from the US, with the remaining 99% coming from Russia, China, Eastern Europe and other Arab States I would have to say that not much seemed to continue.



Never heard of this one but bet that if somebody can dig it up it won't amount to a hill of beans as Iraq was not an enemy at the time and, didn't have any nukes so, 'advanced' training is a rather far fetched term to throw out.