Another Tack: No one to trust

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
10 February '11





“We make our fortunes and then we call them fate.”


– Benjamin Disraeli

Disraeli’s sardonic wisdom remains valid despite all of history’s convolutions and revolutions since his day. Nothing is propelled by blind destiny, because it’s foretold, inscribed on some astrological chart and preordaining consequences that cannot be averted.

Inevitably human hands pull the lever that sets cataclysmic geopolitical events in motion. The human hands that unsettled Egypt, and with it the entire Mideast, are primarily those of the American electorate which elevated Barack Obama to the presidency.

At that pivotal point it should have been clear that the end is near for whatever remnants of delicate equilibrium still endure in this region. Obama ushered in chaos even if he chose Cairo as his venue for the 2009 speech in which he sucked up to Islam. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak significantly absented himself from that milestone sham. He could sense the ill-winds blowing.

This is eerily reminiscent of the series of mind-blowing blunders toward Iran during the term of Jimmy Carter, the past president most like Obama, though hardly as radical. In his memoirs, Ayatollah Khomeini’s first foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi writes that “the shah was doomed the minute Carter entered the White House.”

The novice president indiscreetly sent all the wrong signals, beginning with an exceedingly public cold shoulder to the shah. The mullahs were heartened and exuded confidence. Increasingly shaken, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi sought to ingratiate himself with Carter by relaxing restrictions on opposition agitators. That further emboldened the religious fanatics and spawned unrest. Carter admonished the shah against quelling the disturbances by force.

Willy-nilly, Carter’s bungling was instrumental in installing a reactionary, repressive theocracy in Teheran. Under the banner of freedom, he boosted the forces of medieval darkness. The shah was a goner and the ayatollahs repaid Carter by holding 52 American embassy staffers hostage for 444 days until he was replaced by Ronald Reagan.

(Read full "No one to trust")

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