Sins of the Fathers
As a matter of self preservation, we must examine our actions in the Middle East, which could very well come back to destroy us.
An excellent account of this dilemma is revealed in Stephen Kinzer's alarming book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq". Kinzer writes that more than 50 years ago, Iran was establishing a government close to a democracy. Mohammad Mossadegh a benevolent and incorruptible hero of Iranian history was unhappy that the profit from the country’s primary resource oil was not staying in the country.
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which is now known as British Petroleum was getting 93 percent of the profits and Mossadegh wanted a 50-50 split. The British government didn’t want to use force to protect its business interests, but America willingly took on the task of undermining Mossadegh’s tenure as president. Steven Kinzer writes that after numerous attempts to disrupted the nation, a coup was financed and led by President Dwight Eisenhower’s CIA, and the Shah of Iran was installed as the leader. We trained the Shah’s goon squads, thus angering generations of Iranians for meddling in that nation’s affairs.
Many Americans appear to be too self centered to recognize that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. They remain ignorant of how our imperialistic occupation of Iraq for its oil has rekindled resentment and anger in the Muslim world, which will fester as long as our imperialistic meddling continues.
This is in no way is an effort to provide a moral justification for what the terrorists did on September 11, but we should at least attempt to understand the source of their anger. Furthermore, there is no moral justification to explain the killings of more than 650,000 Iraqis as a result of our occupation. There are many arrogant imperialists that defend our efforts to overthrow other governments whose actions we perceived as jeopardizing American business interests.
At some point, we’ll have to accept that acting as a bully by wrongly asserting our military superiority will eventually have serious repercussions. Americans alive today may not feel the negative effects of our foreign policy, but their innocent children will.
An excellent account of this dilemma is revealed in Stephen Kinzer's alarming book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq". Kinzer writes that more than 50 years ago, Iran was establishing a government close to a democracy. Mohammad Mossadegh a benevolent and incorruptible hero of Iranian history was unhappy that the profit from the country’s primary resource oil was not staying in the country.
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which is now known as British Petroleum was getting 93 percent of the profits and Mossadegh wanted a 50-50 split. The British government didn’t want to use force to protect its business interests, but America willingly took on the task of undermining Mossadegh’s tenure as president. Steven Kinzer writes that after numerous attempts to disrupted the nation, a coup was financed and led by President Dwight Eisenhower’s CIA, and the Shah of Iran was installed as the leader. We trained the Shah’s goon squads, thus angering generations of Iranians for meddling in that nation’s affairs.
Many Americans appear to be too self centered to recognize that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. They remain ignorant of how our imperialistic occupation of Iraq for its oil has rekindled resentment and anger in the Muslim world, which will fester as long as our imperialistic meddling continues.
This is in no way is an effort to provide a moral justification for what the terrorists did on September 11, but we should at least attempt to understand the source of their anger. Furthermore, there is no moral justification to explain the killings of more than 650,000 Iraqis as a result of our occupation. There are many arrogant imperialists that defend our efforts to overthrow other governments whose actions we perceived as jeopardizing American business interests.
At some point, we’ll have to accept that acting as a bully by wrongly asserting our military superiority will eventually have serious repercussions. Americans alive today may not feel the negative effects of our foreign policy, but their innocent children will.
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