What Really Happened in Iran?

It's unfortunate how limited our knowledge of history is. In part, it's because the amount of work involved to be informed. It's impossible to have any depth of understanding by only following media sound bytes. Hence, the importance of reading, but even here you have obfuscation and disinformation taking place so as to mislead. Here's an example.

How many Americans were aware that the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was put in power by U.S. covert action in the early 50s? How many knew any history at all about the roots of the hostage crisis that took place during the Carter administration? I myself knew nothing about the reasons the Shah had to flee his country. Perhaps the media heads themselves were ignorant, except for those who played the mouthpiece for an American spin on these events.

It wasn't until I read David Haberstam's The Fifties that I learned how the Shah came to power, an early "victory" for the CIA, overthrowing a democratically elected leader whom we (the U.S.) didn't like. 

And why didn't we like him? Because he wanted to keep his country neutral during the Cold War. The U.S. wanted a leader who was pro-U.S.

Here's what Halberstam wrote about the overthrow:

[The coup had] gone so smoothly... because local conditions were favorable.  The Shah's historical legitimacy had proved far more compelling than Mossadegh's popularity, which was shaky at best. But Roosevelt [EdNote: not FDR] sensed that Dulles was not terribly interested in that part of his report.

In fact, even as Roosevelt was briefing the top national security people about Iran, planning was going ahead on the next coup--one that they hoped would topple the leftist government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. In fact, soon after Roosevelt's return, he was offered the job of running the new covert operation, which confirmed his earlier suspicions about Foster Dulles's eagerness to proceed in this sphere. The success of the coup in Iran, Roosevelt sensed, had provided an irresistible inducement for the Eisenhower administration: It had been quick, painless, and inexpensive. A potential adversary had been taken out with almost ridiculous ease. American newspapers had all carried the cover story, although the press elsewhere and the Iranian people talked openly about the CIA role.

Administration officials had few moral qualms either about their role or about deceiving the American press and people. They saw themselves in an apocalyptic struggle with Communism in which normal rules of fair play did not apply. 
--David Halberstam, The Fifties

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Earlier this spring I picked up Stephen Kinzer's book All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. The frontispiece sets the tone with this quote by Harry Truman: "There is nothing new in the world except the history you didn't know."

That pretty much sums it up. 

Kinzer begins his preface with this attention-getting anecdote:

PREFACE
One day I attended a book party for an older Iranian woman who had written her memoirs. She spoke for an hour about her eventful life. Although she never touched on politics, she mentioned in passing that her family was related to the family of Mohammad Mossadegh, who served as prime minister of Iran for twenty-six months in the early 1950s and was overthrown in a coup d'etat staged by the Central Intelligence Agency.

After she finished speaking, I couldn't resist the temptation to ask a question. "You mentioned Mossadegh," I said. "What do you remember, or what can you tell us, about the coup against him?" She immediately became agitated and animated.

"Why did you Americans do that terrible thing?" she cried out. "We always loved America. To us, America was the great country, the perfect country, the country that helped us while other countries were exploiting us. But after that moment, no one in Iran ever trusted the United States again. I can tell you for sure that if you had not done that thing, you would never have had that problem of hostages being taken in your embassy in Tehran. All your trouble started in 1953. Why, why did you do it?"

This outburst reflected a great gap in knowledge and understanding...
--Stephen Kinzer

* * * 

Sadly, we have seemingly countless gaps in our knowledge and understanding, but this doesn't seem to stop us from expressing strong opinions on almost everything. Becoming aware of our limitations ought to make us exercise a little more humility before we speak, shouldn't it?

Revisiting the Myth of Those Idyllic 50s. What Really Happened?

Leave It To Beaver publicity still.

This past week I was listening to an audio book called The Next 100 Years, which begins with an insightful re-cap of the past 100 years. There is one given, if you take a forward look from any of the 20 year vantage points (1900, 1920, 1940, 1960, 1980 and 2000.) You will readily see how wrong your expectations would repeatedly have been. In 1900 did anyone expect a world war in less than 15 years? In 1920, after Germany had been totally crushed, did anyone worry about that such a resurgence of that nation could so quickly threaten the world? In 1940 Hitler and Stalin formed a pact and it appeared that democracy was doomed, yet only five years later the Axis powers -- and much of Europe -- lay in ruins. In 1960  how many Americans anticipated that we would be mired in a lengthy conflict in Southeast Asia for obscure reasons that were never quite clear. And furthermore, how could America lose a war? We'd "saved the world" only 15 years earlier.

In 1980 the U.S. economy was staggering and joblessness on the rise, yet over the next 20 years we became the most powerful nation in the world. Communism collapsed and as the new millennium dawned the future looked... Well, on 9/11 that picture flipped and we've been in a series of military conflicts near continuously since.

In short, who can really predict what tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrows will bring?

In this short recap it seems fairly safe to say that many of us look back on the Fifties as a special time in our history. Families went to church, Billy Graham Crusades were filling stadiums, well-paying jobs were abundant. Life was good.

In truth, how idyllic were the 1950s really? If a picture is worth a thousand words, the image of Ward and June Cleaver is one of the best expressions of our image of the time. In contrast, one can parade a whole slew of pictures from the Sixties that would suggest that these are two different Americas. Kids burning draft cards, riots in the streets, burning cities, anti-war protests.

As I mulled over my memories of the Fifties this week, it wasn't all baseball and apple pie. We were in the midst of the Cold War. We practiced air raid drills in school. My aunt and uncle built and stocked a bomb shelter in their basement. McCarthyism disrupted many lives of people in the media, and Jim Crow laws kept people of color powerless in a large swath of our country. Sputnik terrified many who were suddenly made aware of the power of Soviet rocketry. And women were kept in their place in the job market.

The article Two Great Myths About the 1950s. by Alan Petigny, affirms my gut-check on the nostalgic interpretations of that period. Here's an excerpt.

This perceived divide between the nominally conservative, placid 1950s and the socially liberal 1960s has shaped our understanding of the early postwar years. Some see this divide as the product simply of a generation gap while others credit the civil rights and anti-war movements and the rise of second-wave feminism. Still others focus on the formation of a counterculture. But despite their disagreements over how and why, the "when" is considered settled: the decade of the 1960s was when everything changed. This understanding is profoundly wrong and obscures the most significant feature of postwar American culture: a dramatic liberalization of values during the Truman and Eisenhower years that has persisted to this day.

Here's the beginning of another article about the Fifties, The Good Old Days: a 1950s Issues Portfolio, by Renee C. Tolliver:

The number of social issues facing Americans today seems overwhelming. “Whatever happened to the good old days?” is an observation that has become cliche. What do people mean when they say, “the good old days?” When were they? Why were they good? Can we get them back? Do we really want them back? Were those days really so good?

A little further on she writes...

A look at the historical facts and issues of the fifties serves to debunk the myth that the fifties was a golden age for all. This is the decade that saw Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas in 1954 and the brutal murder of 14 year old Emmett Till in 1955 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Even the arrival of television did not produce the focus for warm family gatherings that we seem to associate with the fifties. The impact of television was multifaceted. According to Lynn Spigel’s book, Make Room for TV, “Television was supposed to bring the family together but still allow for social and sexual divisions in the home.” However, what television delivered was not that cut and dry. It became a new conduit of truth, stereotypes and lies. Very few ethnic shows such as The Goldbergs appeared along with the traditional sitcoms like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show and Leave It to Beaver.

Whereas it's true that that for many the times were to some extent idyllic, this was an experience only for some. The poor lived an invisible life outside the scope of our experience.

Here's one more take on the Fifties from Uncle Mike's Musings, another blogger who uses this platform. It's a long read, but has some interesting angles. Top Ten Myths About the 1950s was posted in 2014, but no less relevant today.

Frankly, I do have primarily idyllic memories from my Fifties childhood. We had a stable home, a safe neighborhood. We had books and music in our home and the fridge was always full. We took vacations, did things with our parents, went to the amusement park and the races from time to time. It wasn't till later that I came to understand that we were but one family experience and not representative of all.

Maybe this is the way all histories get written. The early writings glamorize our heroes. It's only later that we learn of their weaknesses, faults and feet of clay. Maybe that is what we miss. Having everything simple, cut and dried, black and white. But isn't that what childhood is in nearly every era? Growing up requires us to notice that things rarely fit into such tidy little packages.

Meantime, life goes on... What do you think?