-
Soros Funds Anti-‘Torture’ Report
May 17, 2013 | 101 comments
-
Transsexual Flights from Reality
May 3, 2013 | 91 comments
-
State Funerals and Christendom
April 23, 2013 | 12 comments
-
The Hero of Star Wars
April 19, 2013 | 45 comments
-
Margaret Thatcher the Methodist
April 9, 2013 | 38 comments
A Further Perspective
Argo Recalls Dark Days
But like some much liberal opinion it misses the point of the Iranian Revolution.
Argo, the movie, features Ben Affleck as the CIA “exfiltrator” who sneaks U.S. embassy personnel out of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran under the guise of a Canadian science fiction movie production crew. The six Americans had escaped the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran as it was overrun by radical protesters ultimately supported by their new, post-Shah regime. They sought refuge with the Canadian ambassador. At the time in 1980, the Canadians were accorded full credit for the escape, while the CIA role was only revealed in 1997.
Of course, 50 other Americans remained trapped as hostages for over a year at the U.S. Embassy, with the feckless Jimmy Carter Administration unable fully to respond. The humiliation was compounded by the failed U.S. rescue operation in which American helicopters crashed in the Iranian desert. Iranian Islamists routinely paraded the hostages before international cameras to humiliate the Great Satan. Concurrently, the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan, which perhaps would have been less likely if the pro-U.S. Shah had retained his throne. The nightmarish years 1979-1980 seemed to embody American malaise and decline amid a world pivoting towards disorder and tyranny.
Argo competently portrays the terrifying Iranian occupation of the U.S. Embassy, which initially assumed that even the Iranian government would respect international diplomatic norms by rescuing them instead of endorsing and exploiting their captivity. So too does the re-creation of Tehran in 1979-1980, a modernized and previously Westernized city, set against a backdrop of snow-topped mountains, that suddenly felt captive to a resurgent radical Islam that despised the West and modernity. It shows Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief of staff, representing the Administration, along with a brief appearance by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. More time is spent inside CIA headquarters in Langley, where nearly everyone, like the rest of America in 1979-80, had bad haircuts and unfortunate clothing.
The CIA had been eviscerated during the Carter years, following the emasculation of the 1970s thanks to the infamous Senator Frank Church Committee and purported reforms that seemed to aspire towards a CIA more akin to the Peace Corps than to espionage and covert action. Argo does not explore the CIA’s near implosion as an effective tool of American power but instead understandably showcases this particular effective operation. Argo does unavoidably portray the hostage takers and the Iranian authorities as the sadistic beasts they were, including a pretend firing squad execution of the hostages at the embassy, among other villainies. But political correctness seems to preclude referencing the militantly radical form of Islam that undergird the terror and lawlessness of the Ayatollah’s new world. In the movie’s introduction, we are told that the Revolution reacted against the imposition of Western culture, while advertising of scantily clad women is shown as an example. In fact, the Islamist Revolution rejected legal and social rights for women, as advocated under the Shah.
Far more irritatingly, the introduction explains the Revolution was the fairly understandable response to the Shah’s ostensible regime of “torture,” fully supported and even encouraged by the U.S. “We had him torture and deball the population,” one U.S. official crassly explains. Another official references the U.S. “ferrying out the torture apparatus” of the Shah before the Ayatollah’s conquest. Inevitably, the 1953 coup, supported by the CIA and British intelligence to restore the Shah and topple nationalist Muhammad Mossadegh, is referenced in the movie introduction as the seminal cause for subsequent tragedies. In this regard, Argo, like much of conventional left-leaning opinion, assumes the Shah was an unprecedented tyrant sustained by American power, against which Iranians have a legitimate grievance.
This assumption begs the question: the Shah was despotic compared to whom? His often notorious SAVAK security service did not invent or introduce torture to Iran/Persia or the Near East and Middle East, where of course it remains alive and well. The Shah’s militant Islamist successors enhanced and expanded the state’s murderous tools of torture and repression on a far vaster scale even dreamt by any SAVAK chief. Since the Ayatollah’s regime, now regrettably 33 years old, was almost immediately far more tyrannical than the Shah even on his worst day, clearly the Revolution against the Shah was not about human rights but against the Shah’s Western influences and in favor of the imposition of strict Islam, which entails the suppression of human rights.
It’s estimated that the Iranian Islamic Republic executed 20,000 political prisoners just in its first decade of rule. According to the Iran Truth Tribunal, there were 15,000 political prisoners executed between 1981 and 1984, with an execution every 2 hours just the first few years of the regime. By comparison, the new biography of the Shah by Abbas Milani estimates that about 1,500 political prisoners were executed during the 37 years of the Shah’s rule. While SAVAK targeted radical Islamists and the Tudeh, Iran’s communist party, the Islamic Republic has targeted almost anyone who challenges its brand of radical Islam. The Shah was a royal dictator. His successors are theocratic totalitarians.
Milani’s biography of the Shah notes that during the 1960s and 1970s under the Shah, Iran was “one of the most liberal societies in the Muslim world in terms of cultural and religious tolerance, and in the state’s aversion to interfere in the private lives of citizens, so long as they did not politically oppose the Shah.” He cites thriving and relatively protected Baha’i and Jewish communities in Iran then. One of the Shah’s sisters even became Catholic, provoking only her brother’s indifference.
As to the 1953 coup, the Milani book notes the CIA, like its critics, enjoyed believing it had masterminded the Shah’s return, but there were many other factors at work. Mossadegh had created political and economic chaos, scaring the middle class and the military. And Muslim clerics turned against him, including a young Khomeini, fearing, like the West, his tacit alliance with Iranian communists, who were able to mobilize more followers in the streets than could Mossadegh. The Shah ultimately fell in 1979 to Khomeini not because he was a tyrant but because, like other feckless monarchs such as Czar Nicholas II and King Louis XVI, he would not wield sufficient force against his opponents. The consequences of weakness, as with Russia and France, were disastrous for the world, and we are still reaping the nasty consequences.
But anti-American myths are more eagerly propagated by the Left and by Hollywood than the ugly reality of murderous revolutions. Even the Religious Left plays the game. In 1980, the United Methodist General Conference dispatched a message to Ayatollah Khomeini about having heard revolutionary Iran’s “cries for freedom from foreign domination, from cultural imperialism, from economic exploitation.” United Methodism’s bishops urged U.S. repentance for its “grave sins” against Iran. One bishop even met Khomeini and denounced the Shah’s “demonic system” while insisting Khomeini taught that an “Islamic system is a democratic system founded on popular insistence.” This bishop, unable completely to ignore the rivers of new blood, claimed Khomeini was only killing “known torturers and killers” from the Shah’s regime.
Maybe a movie someday will explore how Iran gave itself over to madness, helping to birth the global jihadist movement against which we still contend today and will for the rest of our lives. Meanwhile, despite its tut-tutting over the Shah, Argo at least portrays a rare heroic episode during a shameful period.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
More Articles by Mark Tooley
More Articles From A Further Perspective
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/11/30/argo-recalls-dark-days
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- Self-Righteous Republic
- A President Loses His Power
- The (Real) Great Divide
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
ADVERTISEMENT
TLP| 11.30.12 @ 6:57AM
Contest at Wednesday's - "The Honourable Backup".
Read the New Rules.
It would seem, by the look of Today's Menu, that The Contest is sorely needed.
Alan Brooks | 11.30.12 @ 6:55PM
Shah Reza Pahlavi was a little Stalin.
Stormzeye| 12.1.12 @ 3:18PM
You sir are an idiot if you think the Shah's crimes even come close to Stalin's. Read your history instead of polluting this thread with what you think passes for argument.
Appleby| 11.30.12 @ 7:15AM
This movie is not getting any attention here in Canada, where they are disgusted that once again America is taking all the credit for Saving The World. I think the movie was shown for about four days when it first came out. I don't think anybody I know even remembers that any of this happened.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 11.30.12 @ 7:59AM
For 17 years, Canada got all the credit for bringing home the six escapees. I recall the reader boards in 1980 along US Route 30 in Lancaster, PA (heavily frequented by Canadian tourists) all announcing thank you to Canada as the rescue was announced. It wasn't until the matter was declassified nearly two decades later than I learned the CIA even played a role.
Rhoetus| 11.30.12 @ 8:07AM
Why I left the Methodist Church. It worships the United Nations and far-left Progressives.
Seek| 11.30.12 @ 1:01PM
How did the Methodists get this way? It wasn't always like this. Clergy and laymen alike in that church generally now are further to the Left than members of a Democratic Party caucus.
Rhoetus| 12.1.12 @ 10:22PM
I was an acolyte at the First Methodist Church in Van Nuys, CA in the mid 1960's. In the 1980's my parents' minister went to Nicaragua and brought back Sandinista propaganda for his flock.
CJW| 11.30.12 @ 8:20AM
This again reinforces what a terrible president Jimmy Carter was. The 1976 election was close and had Ford won we probably would not have the current Iran problems.
We are now facing the same problem with Egypt going the way of Iran, and Syria probably will once the "rebels" win. The Arab spring is a joke. These are radical Muslims in Egypt and Syrian who will impose an Iran style regime dedicated to destroying Israel and supporting terrorist attacks on the USA.
The Shah and Mubaruk were dictators but they were not enemies of the USA. The radical muslims are enemies of the USA and are totalitarian dictators. Morsi has just announced his decrees cannot be reviewed by any court.
Von Mises Jr| 11.30.12 @ 8:28AM
The greatness of the United States is that we are among the few and the only modern civilizations to have a successful revolution. According to Hannah Arendt in "On Revolution," a successful Constitution following a rebellion is a revolution. Iran, as Libya and Egypt today, were rebellions that ended in tyranny, and in fact totalitarianism.
Not to knit pick, but we should understand what we had and what we are losing under the so-called liberals and progressives. Tyranny and totalitarian is anything but liberal or progressive.
BTW, where's Perp today? Perhaps his bum is too sore from last night to sit in front of his computer?
Anthony| 11.30.12 @ 9:59AM
Von, forget about Purp, you need to worry about vtwin. According to Drudge, the city attorney for San Bernadino has told city residents to lock their doors and load their guns for protection.
The bankrupt California city, sans police protection, is now Dodge City circa 1850.
Wait till the gang bangers of Oakland figure out it's a quick drive over the bridge to get to all those easy marks in San Fran.
Vtwin and the boys will be waiving their pink or white hankies in surrender.
Von Mises Jr| 11.30.12 @ 10:59AM
Twitvin and Perp is probably the same lonely troll drinking Boones Farm Apple Wine in mommy's basement. I just like to pick on Caliban since he is allegedly the left's TAS Think Tank and my version of his name is so telling about his and twitvin's intent.
But you are spot on, my friend. I saw the Hannity special discussing this as well as Harrisburg where they are so broke with mal-investment that your car could be in a new sink hole in front of your house in the morning.
Liberalism is great for some. Obama and Moochelle spent some $1.4B on travel and entertainment last year. They picked them as winners while the dopes in San Bernardino and Harrisburg picked them as losers.
Nobody ever said liberals are smart. Some are clever like the Obama's and their lies, but most are too clever by half. They just voted to raise taxes on half the population trying to get that $250K income earner "Bokonon."
Anthony| 11.30.12 @ 9:49AM
Jimmy Carter was against this operation before he was for it!!!
Kinda like Obozo, whose whereabouts when four Americans died in Benghazi is a state secret that won't be declassified for another 20 years!!!
But hey! what's this fixation with Benghazi, you right wing nut jobs!!! Obozo press hack Jay Carner, the carney barker who throws fish to the assembled dancing seals of the White House Press Corp.
Jack London| 11.30.12 @ 10:01AM
The overthrow of the democratically elected government in 1953, by us and the Brits, was one of the more shameful episodes in our history (and there are a lot of those) and led down the road to wars in Iraq and many other consequences for us in the region.
Tom Kyba| 11.30.12 @ 11:11AM
Do you ever read anything not written by Noam Chomsky? Yeesh!
Anthony| 11.30.12 @ 1:29PM
Tom, I suspect Howard Zinn is one of Jack's favorite leftist American historians.
Jack London| 11.30.12 @ 2:36PM
So - you'd go back and stage a coup in Iran knowing what terrible consequences it had all over again? You people just never learn - I expect you'd do Iraq, Vietnam and all the others all over too.
Anthony| 11.30.12 @ 2:47PM
Yep, I was right, Jack has read Howard Zinn, and has swollowed Howie whole.
Jack London| 11.30.12 @ 3:14PM
No answer I see Anthony. Read Nathan's post below - he understands what you obviously can't - that often we don't do good in the world. You probably don't also realize that we have apologized to Iran for the 1953 coup. In fact, you probably don't know very much at all, do you.
Robert| 12.1.12 @ 10:48PM
Mossadegh was NOT democratically elected by the Iranian people. He was appointed by the parliament of Iran.
He was no lily white savior. By conveniently overlooking the the theft of the assets of the Anglo Iranian Oil Co by Mossadegh, you can sanctimoniously call this a shameful episode of our evil CIA. Nationalization of assets is an act of war. Eisenhower knew the geostrategic consequences for the US of this act against Great Britain were ominous.
Let's face it, you would call any act by the West bad and any egregious theft by a lawless middle eastern potentate virtuous. That's the Liberal Weltanshauung, and it's alive and well in 2012. The so-called Arab Spring, which surely you are cheering, continues to spread the tide of despotism across the Middle East. It's a power hungry leftist's dream!
nathan| 11.30.12 @ 11:32AM
Look the writer misses the point. Sure the Ayatollah was worse than the shah. But assuredly the shah, from a human rights perspective was worse than Mossedegh. Take everything he says about Mossedegh and assume it's true and a lot is debatable. So what? What business of any of it was ours? Mossedegh posed no threat to us, never threatened us, so tell us if you will the basis for deposing him and using street thugs, STREET THUGS mind you to terrorize the people to do it and install the shah. We couldn't justify this and arguably Eisenhower was impeachable on this action alone.
And what is so sad here is that instead of overthrowing a government that posed no threat to us, Eisenhower should have been focused on trying to undo the New Deal programs of his predecessors. In the 50's republicans might have had a chance to stop those entitlement programs. A man of the stature of Ike might have been able to do something. But no, instead of minding his own business, dealing with a problems that were really critical to this country he goes off and deals with something that was tangential at best. What a waste. And in the process earned the lasting emnity of the Iranian people which we're still suffering from.
Stormzeye| 12.1.12 @ 3:27PM
Even Eisenhower had no idea how FDR's fairly benign policies would spin out of control in the hands of LBJ....the worst president ever. It was LBJ who looted the Social Security Trust Fund for the Vietnam War which he promptly turned into a debacle. His War on Poverty is what has caused our current slide into dependency, depravity and diminution of the family in favor of the state.
Rhoetus| 12.2.12 @ 10:54PM
Bingo! We have a winner! Memo to Bob Schieffer, Helen Thomas and Doris Kearns Goodwin: your propaganda is showing.
Theo Prinse| 11.30.12 @ 12:52PM
Traitor and Libyan arms smuggler to Al Qaeda Syria David Petraeus met with the cast of Argo and the movie was meant to play some roll in the re-election of Obama.
Just like the Hollywood people were allowed into the security secrets vault to make a movie on bin Laden whom is said to have been allegedly killed in Abbottabad by Hussein Obama personnally
Alex Feltham | 11.30.12 @ 4:24PM
What do you expect, they're "progressives"!
See "The Regressives" at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
Jardino| 11.30.12 @ 10:50PM
The movie was about getting 6 Americans out of Iran. The movie was not intended to bash the radical Muslims who revolted against the "evil" US-supported, dictator Shah. At the end of the movie, there are tape recordings of Carter and Clinton talking about the historical incident.
When you believe Hollywood is full of Commies, of course you would believe the movie is a biased liberal interpretation of the Iranian revolution.
Cato the Younger| 12.3.12 @ 11:03AM
That's funny, the theme of this column echoes several points in my much-shorter review of Argo on Netflix! (Hey, I was limited to 2000 characters.) I am going to assume Mark read my piece and was inspired by my similar objections to the portrayal of the West's culpability.