To secure a foothold for democracy in the region — and keep oil flowing
at an Anglo-American price — Uncle Sam placed Mohammad Reza Shah back on
the Peacock Throne. The twenty-five years of oppressive dictatorship
that followed was the “sort of memory” that came blowing back through
the looking glass with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which resulted
in a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in Iran and the
transmogrification of Uncle Sam into “Shaytan Bozorg” — the Great Satan.
The Islamic Revolution brought to power a group of fanatically
anti-Western clerics who have inspired a generation of new recruits in
the war against the imperialist aggression of the West; a war that blew
back through the looking glass — and the Twin Towers — as the “War on
Terror.”
This June, both presumptive presidential candidates made their
obligatory supplication at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
convention in Washington D.C. In the “looking glass” world of American
politics, candidates for national office — from federal dogcatcher to the
White House — cannot get elected without first being “voted in” by
Israel’s representatives in the United States.
John McCain told the AIPAC audience, “The State of Israel stands . . .
as the great democracy of the Middle East. [It has] thrived and . . .
built a nation that's an inspiration to free nations everywhere.”
Barack Obama told the same audience, “In a state of constant
insecurity, Israel has maintained a vibrant and open discourse, and a
resilient commitment to the rule of law.”
The White Queen told Alice, “Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
In 1948, Uncle Sam was the first in line to recognize the birth of the
State of Israel in the Land of Palestine. The birth pain of this “great
[Jewish-only] democracy of the Middle East” is known to the entirety of
the Arab world as the “Nakhba” (catastrophe) — the murder of 800
Palestinian Arabs in twenty-four separate Israeli terror attacks that
were calculated to initiate the “ethic cleansing” of 700,000
Palestinians and the destruction of 500 villages.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied and began to illegally
settle the whole of the Land of Palestine. It has since created an
apartheid state whose “resilient commitment to the rule of law” has
forced over four million Palestinians behind walls and beyond the reach
of human rights.
In its sixty-years as an “inspiration to free nations everywhere,”
Israel has yet to draft a constitution, much less a bill of rights. To
do so would mean the self-destruction of the Jewish State as envisioned
by the Zionist ideology that created and sustains it. If Israel is to
self-destruct, it will be in an apocalyptic battle to save itself from
itself.
Uncle Sam’s implicit support for Israel’s repressive policies against
the Palestinian people and his overt support of Israel’s aggression
against neighboring states has blown back through the looking glass
with Iran’s determination to acquire the nuclear technology with which
to both power and protect itself.
As AIPAC-vetted politicians vow to “totally obliterate” Iran if it
continues along a nuclear path, the other side of the looking glass
reveals Uncle Sam offering to help the Shah develop an Iranian nuclear
weapons program in the 1970s, just as he had earlier given a wink and a
nod — and no doubt assistance — as Israel began developing its now
200-strong nuclear arsenal.
Uncle Sam’s foreign policy in the Middle East has created Alice’s
contrary world where “what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be,
it would.” It is a world filled with the “sort of memory” that always
works forward to become the stuff of nightmares and the roost for
returning chickens.
Alice: “So, you ended a democracy that was and support a “democracy”
that isn’t or ever will be until it ceases being a “democracy” so that
democracy will flourish in a land whose only experience of democracy
has been what democracy isn’t?”
Uncle Sam: “Well said!”
Alice: “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
Biography: Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to
Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital
Times in Madison, WI. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com