In yesterday’s Republican primary, Rick Santorum went on a bit of a rant about how Iran is our enemy and evil and all that jazz. To which Ron Paul responded:
OK, the senator — the senator is wrong on his history. We’ve been at war in — in — in Iran for a lot longer than ’79. We started it in 1953 when we sent in a coup, installed the shah, and the reaction — the blowback came in 1979. It’s been going on and on because we just plain don’t mind our own business. That’s our problem.
Later in the debate, Rick picked up on the argument again, referring to Paul:
…anyone that suggests that Iran is not a threat to this country or is not a threat to stability in the Middle East is obviously not seeing the world very clearly. He sees it exactly the way that Barack Obama sees it, that he has to go — we have to go around and apologize for the fact that we’ve gone out and exerted our influence to create freedom around the world.
I don’t apologize for that. I don’t apologize for the Iranian people being free for a long time and now they’re under a — under a mullacracy that — that tramples the rights of women, tramples the rights of gays, tramples the rights of people all — all throughout their society and it’s the greatest supporter of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world and is setting up training camps and is working with Venezuela and other countries in our — south of our border to threaten us.
OK, it is now settled history that, as Paul states, the United States overthrew the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and put the Shaw back into power. The CIA termed it Operation Ajax. Of course, the Iranians didn’t like this and it lead to what the CIA calls “blowback” or in this case, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Irananian hostage crisis and the emergence of the despotic, theocratic reign of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Now it appears that Santorum does not disagree with this (correct) interpretation of history. No, instead he refuses to “apologize for the Iranian people being free for a long time.” Maybe he misspoke or was referring to something other than what had been discussed a few minutes earlier, but it certainly appears Santorum is asserting the Iranians were “free” under the Shah. Uhhh, no.
Good lord I hope he misspoke. And I was hoping that conservatives had become just a wee bit less war-crazed over the last four years… I guess not.
Photo Credit: Arkval Web Works
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