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Wednesday
May 2, 2001

Democracy without revolution

Most excellent point ["Ignorants brought mollas"]. Yes, the Pahlavis were not by any means perfect. But we were making progress under them. Just look, in the 1920's-1970's, most countries were under dictatorship. In fact, Mohammed Reza Shah was the most benevolent of all of them.

My girlfriend is Korean and I have visited South Korea. President Park who ruled Korea as a military dictator was much more intolerent than the late Shah. After Korea underwent a revolutionizing modernization, she gradually became a democracy. Koreans never had the violent revolutions like the ones that Mr. Peerooz and others were involved.

The abuse of Park cronies were many times worse than the Pahlavi courtiers. But when Korea became a democracy, there was no bloodshed. President Kim Dae Jung even pardoned his former tormantors who had been sentenced to death.

Those who criticize Shah for saying he created Islamic Republic are pure ignorants. The Shah didn't tell people to look in the moon and see Khomeini's face. Iran was not the only country under modernizing dictatorship. Most of the world through 1980's was under dictatorship. They all became democratic and none of them experienced the bloodshed, the destruction and the uncivility that Iranian revolutionaries subjected our country to.

Today, Iran is much worse than she was in 1978, poverty higher, religious intolerence is the worst in the world, Iranian women have a fraction of the rights they enjoyed 25 years ago, our GDP per capita is one fourth what it was in 1978, and we are now considered a pariah nation, the number supporter of sponsor of terrorist. Just think this is the land of Cyrus, Darius, Ferdosi, Khayyam and it has sunk so low.

At the same time, South Korea is democratic and the world's 12th largest economy; Taiwan is democratic and a successful economic power house; South Africa is democratic and respected world over, democracies replaced dictatorship in all Latin America and Eastern Europe.

The Eastern Bloc and South American countries are now engaged in global market and Iran is all but left behind. No thanks to those who saw Imam's face in the moon and who's appetite for blood and destruction was only comparable to an army who had just invaded a foreign country.

H. M. Jalili

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