[News] Appealing to the United States is Not Very Appealing

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/blum05152006.html

May 15, 2006


Why the Iranians will be Rebuffed

Appealing to the United States is Not Very Appealing

By WILLIAM BLUM

With his recent letter to President Bush, Iranian President Mahmoud 
Ahmadinejad has become part of a long tradition of Third-World 
leaders who, under imminent military or political threat from the 
United States, communicated with Washington officials in the hope of 
removing that threat.

Under the apparentl belief that it was all a misunderstanding, that 
the United States was not really intent upon crushing them and their 
movements for social change, the Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, 
President Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop, 
leader of Grenada, in 1983 all made their appeals to be left in 
peace, Jagan doing so at the White House in a talk with President 
John F. Kennedy.(1) All were crushed anyhow. In 1961, Che Guevara 
offered a Kennedy aide several important Cuban concessions if 
Washington would call off the dogs of war. To no avail.(2)

In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that ousted Hugo Chavez, some 
of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush 
administration. Chavez learned of this visit and was so distressed by 
it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case 
in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact 
that the coup took place soon thereafter. (3)

Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraqi 
officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, 
informed Washington, through a Lebanese-American businessman, that 
they wanted the United States to know that Iraq no longer had weapons 
of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and 
experts and "2000 FBI agents" to conduct a search. The Iraqis also 
offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World 
Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. The 
Iraqis, moreover, pledged to hold UN-supervised free elections; 
surely free elections is something the United States believes in, the 
Iraqis reasoned, and will be moved by. They also offered full support 
for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process. "If this is about 
oil," said the intelligence official, "we will talk about US oil 
concessions." These proposals were portrayed by the Iraqi officials 
as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein.(NYT 11-6-03) The 
United States completely ignored these overtures.

The above incidents reflect Third World leaders apparent belief that 
the United States was open to negotiation, to discussion, to being 
reasonable. Undoubtedly, fear and desperation played a major role in 
producing this mental state, but also perhaps the mystique of 
America, which has captured the world's heart and imagination for two 
centuries. In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh wrote at 
least eight letters to US President Harry Truman and the State 
Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese 
independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being 
endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested 
that "the four powers" (US, Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain) 
intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the 
Indochinese issue before the United Nations.(4)

This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, at the Versailles 
Peace Conference following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh had 
appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing (uncle of Allen 
Dulles and John Foster Dulles, whom Lansing appointed to the US 
delegation) for America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and 
an improvement in the living conditions for the colonial subjects of 
French Indochina. His plea was ignored.(5) His pleas following the 
Second World War were likewise ignored, with consequences for 
Vietnam, the rest of Indochina, and the United States we all know 
only too well. Ho Chi Minh's pleas were ignored because he was, after 
all, some sort of Communist; yet he and his Vietminh followers had in 
fact been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho trusted the 
United States more than he did the Soviet Union and reportedly had a 
picture of George Washington and a copy of the American Declaration 
of Independence on his desk. According to a former American 
intelligence officer, Ho sought his advice on framing the Vietminh's 
own declaration of independence. The actual declaration of 1945 
begins: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator 
with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness."(6)

Now comes the president of Iran with a lengthy personal letter to 
President Bush. It has the same purpose as the communications 
mentioned above: to dissuade the American pit bull from attacking and 
destroying, from adding to the level of suffering in this sad old 
world. But if the White House has already decided upon an attack, 
Ahmadinejad's letter will have no effect. Was there anything 
Czechoslovakia could have done to prevent a Nazi invasion in 1938? Or 
Poland in 1939?

William Blum is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512526/counterpunchmaga>Killing 
Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga>Rogue 
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1887128727/counterpunchmaga>West-Bloc 
Dissident: a Cold War Political 
Memoir<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga>.

He can be reached at: <mailto:BBlum6 at aol.com>BBlum6 at aol.com


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