Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Glenn Millam]

For those who are unaware, or would like better clarification about what Rezwan refers to as “’53,” a good book to read is Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner. It, among other things, tells the full story of the CIA’s orchestrated overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran. It is a lso a great book for understanding just how screwed up that organization has been over its history, and how its mandate has been abused my numerous US administrations.

The one thing to remember about all this is that most of these really bad decisions were made by people trying to lead the US through the Cold War. Their minds were filled with Alger Hiss, the spy campaign in the Manhattan project, communist threats, communist infiltration into our government (imagined and otherwise), and the sense that things were spinning out of control towards communist enslavement and forced atheism, or nuclear holocaust. I believe this caused a great amount of paranoia in the US, and this mental disease became infectious, with the US government doing things that it otherwise wouldn’t consider, and by the injury to others turning otherwise stable, peaceful countries and cultures into paranoid, introverted ones. Iran’s current stance towards the west comes from this injury, and it, in my opinion, suffers from the mental disease began in the Cold War by the tension between the Soviet Union and the West. It is a disease we stopped suffering from in the early ’90’s but Iran still has it. And Iran isn’t alone.

I am hoping President Obama’s current approach will begin to ease the paranoia and start allowing the leadership and people in Iran and other countries to think more clearly, and perhaps begin to trust again. We need to heal from the wounds of the Cold War.