Philip and Elizabeth. Are you rooting for them, against them or

Sorry, kid, but referencing two lengthy posts by yourself and an article in a magazine published by a far-right conservative think tank does not debunk anything.

Well it does if you actually read them. And the author of that article, which appeared in a mainstream conservative publication (not "far-right"), is a respected scholar who supported his claims with verifiable facts. He also points out how your "National Security Archive" source, a private leftist propaganda group with a misleadingly official sounding title, among others, cherry-pick and distort what the actual declassified primary source documents say.

The involvement of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the CIA in covert activity to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende has been well documented.

 Now you're backtracking. Above you claimed, "And Chile in 1973 when the CIA organized a coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and installed the brutal, fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet."

That was your claim. It's funny how you dismiss one source as "far-right" without even reading it while basing your entire position on an actual far left source. Have you even read through the primary pdf documents on your linked page? The leftist website's prose claims and insinuations aren't supported by the documents.

The documents confirm that the US was not behind the 1973 coup. As I already informed you on the other thread, they had toyed with various ways to remove Allende from power in 1970, including with a coup, but changed their minds. The cherry-picked documents on your propaganda page tellingly skip from 1970 to 1973, after the coup, lol.

They literally say in secret meetings after the coup, "We didn't do it.". They didn't like Allende because he was a Soviet friendly socialist who stole American property and was running his country into the ground, and if he remained in power he could have facilitated Marxist takeovers of other regional nations. But they didn't remove him. The US took overt action opposing Allende in the form of criticism, though frankly there was very little even economic push back considering that strong reprisals for stealing US property would have been warranted. In fact US aid to Chile continued under Allende, a fact I pointed out on the other thread and your own linked documents here confirm. They also point out about Allende's ouster in these documents, "We think we have a real opportunity to keep our hands off and to develop really good relations with the new government. It would be in our best interests not to be a part of it or even appear to be a part of it. It was a true national effort. The chances are that they will probably turn first to Brazil for aid, and we think this would be good for us, too". They also tellingly say, "One-third of the country is still pro-Allende. The new regime won't want to get too closely associated with us."

Only a third of the country (at most) still being pro-Allende is the real reason he was ousted by his own people.

The US didn't "install" Pinochet either, nor did it condone his abuses of power. Washington liked him for a while because he was anti-communist (sort of like allying with the communists in WW2 when the US was fighting the Nazis), but your own linked documents show Nixon officials devoting some of their secret discussion to the human rights situation. Heck, the last pdf on the page was from a 1976 meeting where Kissinger is pushing Pinochet on the human rights issue, albeit politely and gently, encouraging him to improve things. Through much of the documents the US officials are basically just trying to figure out what's happening in these various countries, not controlling everything like a puppet master.

But speaking of Ronald Reagan....With CIA and State Department assistance they were engaged in the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government.....I expect your state of deep denial will prevent you from accepting the historical record on this as well.

This just underscores your historical ignorance. Reagan's support for the Contra freedom fighters was public. It became a "scandal" after a partisan Democrat congress tried to make such funding illegal, and some continuing efforts moved into the covert realm. It was a scandal about legal technicalities. Opposing the oppressive, genocidal, communist Sandinistas (who, btw, from the beginning had been supporting Marxist insurgents trying to overthrow the El Salvador government) was the right thing to do. When Nicaraguans finally got the right to vote in truly free and fair elections at the end of the decade, they voted the Marxists out and the widow of a Contra in.

I expect your state of deep denial will prevent you from accepting the historical record on this as well.

reply share

add reply

formatting help

zizica-1, I appreciate your willingness to engage on this issue since unfortunately academics (hardly "non-partial" or "objective") have been largely culpable in perpetuating the myth of the US "ousting a democratically elected leader", whether motivated by a political agenda or just a go with the flow intellectual laziness that leaves them repeating the narrative and subjective assessments of other secondary sources. To answer your question I've read the full Wilber CIA report, along with other documents, and have quoted from it over the years.

Obviously the assassination I'm referring to is of Ali Razmara in 1951, not either of the two men to briefly serve in the interim for a few weeks combined. If you want to get pedantic "predecessor" is often used to refer to more than just the immediate predecessor (e.g. "Obama racked up about as much debt as all of his predecessors combined."), but, semantics aside, he was the most recent PM of significance. Razmara was a pro Western PM whose chief rivals were the National Front party led by Mossedegh and the theocrats led by Kashani. He opposed oil nationalization while they violently supported it.

You say Razmara was killed by the Islamists, but it's disingenuous to imply there was some sharp break between the National Front and the theocrats at the time. Kashani and Mossedgh were allies. The Islamists played a large role in putting Mossadegh in power. Hopefully you know there have also always been rumors and doubts swirling over who was really behind Razmara's killing. Regardless, the man arrested for killing Razmara, Khalil Tahmasebi, was released by the Mossedegh dominated government in 1952 and praised as a "soldier of Islam". He was only rearrested and eventually executed years later after Mossedegh had been ousted.

Clearly I know what a parliamentary government is as I lay out the process above. I mentioned that because most Americans see "democratically elected" and picture something like our presidential election where there's a nation wide vote. I also bet if you're honest you'd have to admit that when it comes to knowledge of Iranian history I'm in the top 1% of people you've encountered on IMDb. Most would struggle to find it on a map, including most of those who'd repeat the "coup" one liner quoted below (found in the intro to the movie Argo and countless other places). Apart from the "predecessor" thing, it's unclear what specifically I said that you're even disagreeing with. You seem to be taking issue with my criticism of the tone with which the following bullet point is routinely delivered in popular media:

"In 1953 the US ousted the democratically elected leader of Iran in a coup."

It's usually presented that way, without any additional qualification, facts, or context. As I explained earlier, it's not completely false so much as misleading. Hitler was elected through the existing democratic process, but it would be disingenuous to sum up that period by stating "the US ousted the democratically elected leader of Germany" almost every time the topic was mentioned. For one thing the US wasn't alone in the ousting; for another describing Hitler merely as "democratically elected", while true (by your logic especially), hardly tells the whole story fairly.

- Do you deny what I said about Mossedegh's rise to power being facilitated by violent street agitation and assassination (whether he was directly involved or not)?

- Do you deny that he suspended one election in the middle when his side wasn't doing as well as he'd hoped and another time used a referendum with separate "yes" and "no" polling stations to let the people grant him "emergency" dictatorial powers with a Saddam Hussein-like 99% of the vote?

- Do you deny that he undertook a radical redistribution agenda along socialist lines that caused upheaval and wrecked the economy (being the capitalist you say you are)?

- Do you deny that he eventually sought to dissolve the legislature so he could enact laws himself?


As for the coup, if you actually read Wilber's lengthy, detail rich report, you'd see him openly admit how demoralized they were after the coup they had organized failed. He talks about them sitting around being depressed. You'd also see that the CIA crew was surprised when the popular uprisings started after Kashani publicly ordered the Shah arrested. So was Moscow for that matter. They were still publicly celebrating the Americans' failure while Mossedegh was being ousted.

You'd know that Operation Ajax operated on a shoe string budget of $1 million dollars, not all of which was spent. Part of the reason the bullet point narrative has endured is that the CIA promoted it itself, as bureaucracies naturally want to take credit for successes in hopes of enhancing their prestige and future budgets. That combined with anti-American propagandists also wanting to emphasize it didn't leave many people with an incentive to question or push back against it over the decades. Remember that Iran is a country with tens of millions of people. It's easy to overstate how much impact the CIA propaganda campaign, clever as it was, had in a vast country with all sorts of propaganda flying around from all sorts of factions with different agendas, many better funded than Ajax was. Keep in mind that the Wilber report and associated CIA documents were written from a CIA perspective with a CIA-centric focus. Sure, they jumped in to help once the final popular uprising was raging, and in some important ways, but the notion that they single handedly engineered that uprising is preposterous. Kashani alone was more important than everyone the CIA paid combined. Him turning against Mossadegh was the true tipping point in Mossadegh's downfall.

A more realistic version of the bullet point would read:

"In 1953 the US helped oust a Marxist Iranian PM who had governed as a dictator."

And yes, I'm familiar with SAVAK and Cold War era claims about its US ties, true, false, and exaggerated. If you read declassified US documents on that or frankly lots of other controversial Cold War era matters (sans prose on the pages of a leftist anti-American site like "NSA"), what generally comes across is that the US wasn't a puppet master, US officials did care about human rights and sometimes leaned on their allies who abused them to various degrees (if arguably not always enough in hindsight), and US officials were usually just trying to figure out what was happening in these countries. The US did not want the Shah to rule as the dictator he became, and explicitly disagreed with many of his actions in these secret meetings. The US also eventually withdrew support from the Shah, the wisdom of that decision being credibly questioned since then as he was replaced by an Islamist regime that proved to be even worse and remains in power to this day.

Your English is passable but if you have difficulty understanding any of the Wilber report I'd be happy to explain it to you.

reply share

add reply

formatting help