Essays in Idleness

Sometimes, the nicest thing you can do for a dear old friend, is to lay him out. Perhaps he was drinking, and made a terrible fool of himself. Ideology is like that. Those under its fatal influence are capable of behaving in the most appalling and undignified ways. But like the old cinema trope, the answer to a crisp smack across the face, should be, “Thanks, I needed that.” By now, the Iranians are ready to thank us. It doesn’t matter if they do, however. We must continue laying out their government.

I travelled, modestly, in Iran, last century, in the later days of the Shah. At the time I was very much impressed, both by the monuments of ancient Persian civilization, and by the nation’s success in mastering modernity. It was a free and prosperous place, ahead, it seemed, of all the alternatives in “third-world” Asia, and the Shah’s prediction that his country would soon catch up with Western Europe was quite plausible. My adventures I told elsewhere; I wasn’t nearly as aware of politics and history as I am now. (I was scandalously young.) Indeed, part of my coming of age was to experience how totally freedom could be lost, at the savage fanatical hand of a very proud, evil man: Khomeini. And how naïve, stupid, and useless, were his opponents.

Iran should have been sharply slapped in 1979. That was the time for invasion, forty-seven years ago, in response to the taking of the American hostages. Done properly (with the “martyrdom” of Khomeini), two generations of Persians could have avoided their appalling subsequent fate. Alas, America was then in the hands of Carter, a smug moron. This was because America no longer knew anything about politics, and less than nothing about “Democracy”; and did and still does not realize the advantages that Imperialism, Colonialism, and Monarchy, confer.