American interventionists are upset with Barack Obama for not taking a more aggressive stand in favor of the protestors in Iran. Alas, the interventionists just don’t get it. While they themselves are lovers of the U.S. federal government, what they don’t understand is that such love is not shared by people in other parts of the world, including people who are resisting tyranny in Iran.
Unlike other empires in history, the U.S. Empire is not based on installing citizens of the empire in positions of power in foreign nations. Instead, the goal of the U.S. Empire is to install citizens of foreign countries into power but ones that will be loyal and beholden to the Empire itself.
Consider, for example, Cuba. The reason that U.S. officials have been obsessed with effecting regime change in Cuba for so long is not the fact that the country is headed by a dictator, that the dictator is brutal, or that the dictator is a socialist.
After all, the U.S. Empire aligns itself with brutal dictatorships all the time. Also, the empire itself embraces a multitude of socialist programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, public housing, etc.).
The problem with Cuba is that it is headed by a brutal dictator who has chosen to remain independent of U.S. Empire control. The same goes for North Korea. Venezuela. And others.
It is that independence that strikes at the heart of the Empire. It is that independence that Empire officials cannot countenance. That leads to interventionism, a policy by which U.S. officials devote themselves to ousting the recalcitrant ruler from power and replacing him with a U.S. stooge or puppet.
Once the stooge or puppet is installed into power, he is expected to do two things: (1) maintain order within the country, by brutal means if necessary, and (2) respond favorably when the Empire needs a favor, such as a favorable vote in the United Nations or membership in a coalition of the willing.
Thus, Empire officials don’t much care how a puppet or stooge treats his own citizenry so long as order is maintained. In fact, oftentimes U.S. Empire officials will support brutal actions by the stooge, especially torture, in order to ensure a continuation of power and a maintenance of order.
Examples include Saddam Hussein, the shah of Iran, Pervez Musharraf, Augusto Pinochet, and a long line of Latin American military dictators (whose military forces have been trained in brutality and torture at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas).
Other examples include brutal authoritarian regimes that torture people on behalf of the Empire, such as Egypt, Syria, and Libya.
Here at home, empire officials hail such countries as great friends and allies of the United States. Americans are taught to believe that the citizens of such countries are happy and pleased with their U.S.-supported stooge.
The problem, of course, is that the people who are tortured and brutalized by the U.S. puppet seethe with anger. Over time, such anger oftentimes boils over into rage.
That’s, of course, what happened in Iran in 1979. After some 25 years suffering under the terror and torture of the shah, whom the U.S. Empire had restored to power after ousting Iran’s democratically elected prime minister from power, the Iranian people revolted, ousted the shah, and installed a radical Islamic regime into power.
What many Americans could not understand is why there was simultaneous anger against the United States. They could not understand why the Iranian revolutionaries took hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Iran. Americans didn’t know about the U.S. Empire’s support of the terror and torture that its puppet, the shah, had inflicted on the Iranian people.
What should the U.S. government do with respect to the current situation in Iran? The same thing it should do with respect to the internal situation of every other country in the world: Butt out and stay out. In that way, whichever side prevails there is no anger or animosity within the losing side against the United States.
What should the American people do? Dismantle the U.S. Empire and restore a limited-government republic to our land, prohibit the U.S. government from interfering with the affairs of other nations, and liberate the American people — the private sector — to interact and trade with the people of the world.