A mad scientist creates a Frankenstein, and the creature
turns against its creator. This is the best way to describe what many Western
countries have been doing in trying to impose on others a system of culture and
governance they believe is so perfect, every nation on Earth must follow it
voluntarily or be forced into it.
That's what is attempted by someone who goes by the name
Peter Kohanloo, and says he is president of a group he calls Iranian American
Majority. He put down his ideas in an article that came under the title: “A
Road Map to Regime Change in Tehran” and the subtitle: “Critics of the Iran
nuclear deal can at least make sure America puts the 10-year horizon to good
use,” It was published on Sept. 24, 2015 in the Wall Street Journal.
To understand how foolish that is, we need to develop a
historical perspective as to how and where such ideas originated. It was during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the European fiefdoms started the
trend and practiced it on each other. They did so by taking turn harboring each
others' dissidents and using them to foment insurrections in the home countries
of the guests they had taken in. Now that time has passed, and we have the
advantage of hindsight, historians are not rushing to point out that such
policies bore fruit anywhere.
The policies did not work because they constituted a break
from the traditional ways that cultures have evolved over the millenniums.
Throughout time, travelers that visited other lands took ideas to them, thus
helped to bring about a gradual change to those places. And when the travelers
returned home, they brought back the new ideas that contributed to the
evolution of their own cultures. Everybody changed … and they did so voluntarily.
When the age of colonization began towards the middle of the
nineteenth century, the Europeans did not think of the colonies as being worthy
of having a system of culture or governance comparable to theirs. They
considered the people of those places backward, and worked to maintain them in
that state indefinitely so as to exploit their resources for as long as they
could.
But then, one by one, the colonies managed to liberate
themselves, and the tendency gave the colonial powers the idea of interfering
with their progress. They did so by enlisting dissidents and training them to
foment insurrections in their own countries. They also promised that if a
revolution results and the governing body is defeated, they will receive all
the help they need to take control of the territory and govern it themselves.
The colonial powers had some success in some of the places
but failed in other places. The net result is that such attempts created a
horrible legacy, forcing future rulers of former colonies to start adopting
authoritarian forms of governance to protect themselves from what they called
outside interference. And that's when the dissidents fled to the home of the
colonial powers where they took up residence. In the safety of these places,
groups of dissent formed and labored to bring about a regime change in the
countries they left behind.
That's what the Kohanloo group is trying to replicate. The
fact that his article was published in the Wall Street Journal, says he has the
backing of none other than the Judeo-Israeli lobby. Because of this, it is
worth recalling what happened to similar attempts from three angles: (1) How
the people of the Middle East reacted; (2) What happened to the dissidents; and
(3) What has been America 's
experience with that game.
1. I know from first hand experience what happened in Egypt
because when I landed there towards the end of the 1950s, there were something
like ten so-called pirate stations beaming hateful propaganda against then
President Nasser, urging the population to rise in anger and bring down the
government. Instead of developing anger, we treated the thing for what it was:
a laughable and entertaining thing. They wasted their breath on us.
2. The stations disappeared, Nasser died, new governments
came and went in Egypt but groups of dissent remained in Britain from where
they beamed hateful propaganda not only at Egypt but also the other Arab
countries. This is when the Arab governments warned the Brits they were creating
the Frankenstein that will someday turn against them. This came to pass … and
look who's sorry now.
3. Cuba , Nicaragua , Chile ,
Venezuela , Peru … is there any place where the United States
scored a success worth replicating? Not one place.