Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

First of all, President Carter did everything he could to keep the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, fixed on his throne; it was the Iranian people who compelled him to step down in favor of Ayatollah Khomeini. Second, as explained in No. 7, the Shah was hardly a "moderate autocrat" as his military and twenty thousand intelligence agents swarmed Tehran spying on, arresting, torturing and summarily executing legions of political opponents. By Hannity and Kirkpatrick's definition, in the 1980s Saddam Hussein even qualified as a moderate autocrat. The third lie here is that American interests are served by attempting to maintain Western-friendly dictators such as the Shah in power. (More recent examples come to mind including King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.) Rulers who continuously stifle the will of the people, violate their fundamental rights, and depend on their armed forces in order to preserve their self-serving relations with the US represent severe liabilities, not assets, to the American national interest. Crushing liberty even in the name of protecting it does not advance our cause, but that of our enemies; it reeks of hypocrisy, ignites terrorism and endangers our security.

Fourth and finally, the broad generic term "American interests" as used by Hannity and Kirkpatrick is misleading. In reference to the Shah's time, "American interests" actually meant American corporate interests; in reference to today, it means American mega-corporate interests. Wealthy and grasping entrepreneurs have been exerting a steadily stronger influence over US foreign policy--and, in the process, growing fantastically wealthier--ever since CIA agents handed the Shah his throne in 1953. Now with our seemingly unbreakable alliance with Israel, a long-range "War on Terrorism," the unending war in Iraq, and threats to Iran, neoconservatives have finalized the process of merging mega-corporate interests and the national interest smoothly into one in the public mind.

But no two interests could possibly be so different. The real, true American national interest is guided by religion and morality, the two pillars of our Republic as George Washington put it--and within those pillars, the proper definition of this interest is whatever benefits the common good of Americans and promotes the freedom of all peoples of the world equally, without exception.