There is a clear broad tilt in the American and global media against President Mubarak’s regime. I have seen statements of support for Mubarak and dismissal of the protests from some Israeli leaders and oddly from John Bolton.
But on another front, former Newsweek chief foreign correspondent Arnaud de Borchgrave sent me this interesting reminder about the fall of the Shah in Iran. Just something to remember and consider.
Our institutional memories are apparently non-existent. I did the last interview with the Shah on Nov. 8, 1978.
I told him his friends Henry Kissinger and Al Haig and others had asked me to ask him why he did not suppress the revolution and then drastically reform the regime. He answered he had been betrayed by the US and did not wish to see any more blood.
I did not know how ill he already was but I realized then he was finished. The world liberal media was already fawning over Ayatollah Khomeini giving his daily press conferences in a Paris suburb. A number of them flew back with him to Tehran, hailing him as the great liberator from the Shah’s tyranny.
The Shah was an enlightened liberal next to the medieval theocrat the world media was hailing as the liberator of the Shah’s brutal dictatorship. And the rest is history. The Ayatollahs executed more people in the first six months than the Shah’s regime had done in a whole generation.
Arnaud de Borchgrave
Former US Senator Paul Laxalt (R-NV), a good friend of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, was the person Ronald Reagan used to communicate to Marcos that he had to go and that US support was over.
Who will Obama use with Mubarak?
— Steve Clemons
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