Why they hate us

[avram]

Since I finished Moby-Dick I’ve been reading All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror by Stephen Kinzer. This is the story of how the CIA and MI6 overthrew Iran’s democratic government in 1953 to install a tyrannical monarchist government that wouldn’t oppose British control of Iran’s oil. Ever wonder why Iranians hate the US? That coup was why. Before that, they hated the Brits and the Russians, but they liked the US. Just the thing to read if you’re under the impression that fucking over Middle Eastern countries, and fucking ourselves over in the process, is something we just started doing recently.

(Best name in the book: Nader Batmanqelich, masked crimefighter Iranian general. Second-best: Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent in charge of the operation. Third place goes to Shaban the Brainless, mob organizer in the CIA’s pay.)

This has me in the mood to read more non-fiction for a while. Also to smack the hell out of anyone who thinks Americans know anything about running things in other countries. But I’m more likely to do the reading. So even though I’ve got copies of Ross Thomas’s Missionary Stew and James Tiptree Jr’s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever sitting here waiting for me, I stopped off at Borders on the way home and picked up Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby.

Comments

[volund.livejournal.com]

... I stopped off at Borders on the way home and picked up Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby.

An excellent book, and an excellent history of a strain of American philosophical thought that I'm sure our current faith-based powers-that-be wished would just go away ... if they're even aware of it anymore.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in your thoughts re the American Secularism book when you're done with it.

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

The whole "knock over Iran... oops, they went theocratic and stopped listening to us... okay, set up Iraq.... oops, they stopped listening to us..." (etc) rather reminds me of the to-catch-a-fly story.