As Egypt struggles into a new day, reports emerge that the Egyptian military is working behind the scenes to break the back of the protests though a campaign of "Crackdown 2.0." Aware of indicators that the conscript rank-and-file would resist orders to fire indiscriminately into the crowds, the UK Guardian's Chris McGreal reportedyesterday that:
The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.
The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.
McGreal's report follows remarks to the NY Times last week by Naval Postgraduate School Professor and Egyptian military specialist Robert Springborg that:
"Behind the scenes, the military is making possible the various forms of assault on the protesters. It’s trying to secure a transition for itself. There’s lots of evidence that the military is complicit..."
All this is now quite apart from the departure of Mubarak. The question now is whether the Egyptian military will accept a transition to civilian rule, and whether the US will back this transition even if means suspending military aid should the military turn intransigent. It is on this last point that we should examine what history has to teach us.
The ugly subtext promoted by the Neocons is that the Muslim masses are not ready for democracy, and when you give it to them, what you get is Hamas. This belies the true history of democratic movements in the region, and the role we have played in squashing them at every turn. Just such a debate as is taking place today took place as Iranian populist President Mohammed Mossadeq began demanding that his people benefit from the oil being extracted by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company back in 1952. It was argued by Secretary of State and Neocon mentor John Foster Dulles that Mossadeq was an extremist threat, ready to deliver Iran to the communist bloc. All this is detailed in the gripping story told by Stephen Kinzer in "All the Shah's Men, An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror".
But President Harry Truman had a different view. He considered Mossadeq, who headed the National Front, a fractious coalition of political and religious elements who agreed on little else but Mossadeq’s honesty and his drive to get a fair oil deal for Iran, to be the West's best "bulwark" against communism. A Cold Warrior who refused to negotiate with Russia and who fulfilled the Truman Doctrine by ruthlessly intervening in Greece, Truman liked Mossadeq, and made the distinction between armed leftist minorities and popular nationalist movements which represented the legitimate aspirations of a people.
As far as the danger that Mossadeq would fall under communist sway, he had once gone as far as suppressing the Iranian communist Tudeh Party and throwing some of its members in jail.
The British position on Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) infuriated the Truman administration. The administration called AIOC’s stubbornness "one of the greatest political liabilities affecting the United States/UK interests in the Middle East," and called the company’s policies "reactionary and outmoded." Truman said company’s attitude was "a handicap in the control of communism." The coup and a transition to military dictatorship under the Shah was Dulles answer to Iranian's longing for democracy and a fair shake. Upon the news that Mossadeq had nationalized the Iranian oil fields, British Foreign Minister Winston Churchill argued for shelling Iranian ports immediately.
Upon succeeding Truman, Dwight Eisenhower similarly liked Mossadeq and called him "the only hope for the West in Iran." "I would like to give the guy ten million bucks" he once told British Ambassador Anthony Eden, who was attempting to broach the subject of the proposed coup.
What happened next is history. The hard-right national security wing of the Eisenhower administration, led by the Dulles brothers, initiated a CIA coup of Mossadeq very likely without Eisenhower's full knowledge until it was too late to turn back. The coup resulted in the CIA installation of the Shah, whose regime made Saddam Hussein's torture look mild by comparison, and which included methods such as forcing boiling water into the rectum. When the Iranians finally threw off the Shah in the 1979 Revolution which was to be hijacked by the Mullahs, The U.S. shunned the outstretched hand of the students, and granted the Shah asylum in the U.S.
It was on BBC a few nights ago that Richard Perle, a principle architect of the Iraq War in the Bush administration, lamented that some of these Middle Eastern countries had "no tradition of democracy," and thus were at risk when democracy came. Perle's lens stopped at 2001 Hamas, and neglected to mention just why the Middle East had no democratic tradition.
Stepehen Kinzer writes:
"It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah’s repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York."
The question now is whether we will show the perceptiveness of a Truman and make the distinction between inarticulate discontent ready to fall to extremist elements, as Truman saw in Greece, and a robust, popular movement unwilling to trade one kind of dictator for another, as he saw in Iran. Had Truman's and Eisenhower's views of Mossadeq prevailed over the exceptionalist views of the Dulles brothers, whose worlds consisted of mom, apple pie, and torture, would there have been a 911?
There is a particular anecdote of the man the Dulles brothers and the CIA overthrew in 1953, which has affected US relations with the Middle East right up to the morning of 911. Kinzer relates an anecdote from an interviewee about an incident in Mossadeq's later years, when he lived his days out in Iran under house arrest and one of the Shah's men had beaten one of the people in the village he lived in:
"It was the only time I ever saw him [Mossadeq] get angry. He called the police chief and shouted at him to come to the house immediately. When he got to the house, Mossadeq pushed him against a wall, held his cane against the guy’s throat and shouted: ‘You are here to watch me, and you have no right to abuse anyone else. If you have a problem, you come to me and only me! Don’t ever, ever lay a finger on one of my people again!’ This was a Savak officer [the Shah’s secret police] and not a nice man at all...After that, the police never went near us."
Mossadeq was 82 at the time. His name is revered across the Middle East to this day.
UK Guardian Photo, Army dragging protester from Tahrir Square to police station
Members of Senate Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations which must approve the $1.5 billion per year appropriation to the Egyptian military, up for renewal on March 4, 2011:
(Capitol switchboard, US Congress (operator will connect to proper office upon giving zip code) 202-224-3121 )
* Senator Patrick Leahy (Chairman) (VT)
* Senator Daniel Inouye (HI)
* Senator Tom Harkin (IA)
* Senator Barbara Mikulski (MD)
* Senator Richard Durbin (IL)
* Senator Tim Johnson (SD)
* Senator Mary Landrieu (LA)
* Senator Frank Lautenberg (NJ)
Secretary Hillary Clinton 202-647-5291
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg 202-647-8636
Special Assistant to the Secretary and the Executive Secretary of the Department Stephen D. Mull 202-647-5301
The White House
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414