I Wish I'd Gone To A School Where They Taught Us Stuff

The Independent in England just published an excerpt (now unfortunately behind a pay wall) from a new book by Mark Bowden called Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam.

If I were teaching a high school class about politics, I'd make them read this on the first day. It explains essentially everything you need to know about how the world works.

First, Bowden gives us the U.S. version of the hostage story:

To Americans, for whom the incident has become little more than an embarrassing footnote, the hostage crisis was an unprovoked crime, carried out by a scruffy band of half-crazy Islamist zealots driven by a senseless hatred of all things American.

Then there's the Iranian version:

For many Iranians, however, the hostage crisis was an unalloyed triumph. Embossed with florid Shia mysticism, the episode has taken on the force of national myth -- an epic story of a small group of devout young gerogangirha (hostage-takers) who, armed with only prayer and purity of heart, stormed the gates of the most evil, potent empire on the planet, booted out the American devils, and secured the success of the mullahs'revolution.

And then, most important, is REALITY:

The young Iranians envisioned having to subdue and confine members of the American mission for perhaps a day or two, but they had no intention of holding them for any length of time...The hostage-takers' immediate goal was to put pressure on the provisional government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. This interim authority had been appointed by Khomeini after the fall of the Shah to preside until a new constitution could be written. Bazargan favoured a Western-style state, but in the eyes of extremists - both Islamists and Marxists - he was watering down the revolution. They saw the provisional government's efforts to re-establish ties with the rest of the world as a sell-out.

The opportunity for radical change appeared to be slipping away. So extremists fanned fears of an American-led countercoup' the plan to seize the embassy grew out of these fears. Khomeini was not informed about the takeover in advance, and by the time it was presented to him it was a fait accompli, and hugely popular. Hundreds of thousands of gleeful Iranians celebrated in the streets around the embassy night and day, burning Carter in effigy and chanting: "Death to America!"Khomeini had little choice but to embrace the brash gerogangirha, and to officially anoint them as national heroes. Bazargan's government resigned two days after the takeover, and the revolution tilted permanently into the arms of the mullahs.

There you have it: the main goal of all political actors, particularly violent right wing ones, is almost always to make themselves more powerful than their rivals in their own country. They are trying to beat their "enemies" on their own "side." However, they always always always claim they're it doing for everyone in their tribe. (Meanwhile, their counterparts on the other "side" make up a mirror image fantasy to make themselves more powerful than their own domestic "enemies.")

Thus, Bush invades Iraq because he thinks it will help him crush the Democrats. Osama bin Laden kills thousands on 9/11 because he thinks it will help him crush his Muslim rivals. But rather than being honest—"I'm doing this because I think it'll really be great for ME!"—Bush, bin Laden and the Iranian mullahs all claim they did it to protect their "people."

This is the most obvious thing in the world. It's Politics 101, what everyone should learn when they're in 3rd grade. What I find peculiar is I went to school for seventeen years yet had to figure it out for myself.