Allen Ginsberg: Iran Was OUR Hostage For 25 Years, Jack!

Allen Ginsberg: Iran Was OUR Hostage!

Poet Allen Ginsberg (1926 -1997)

Counterculture icon Allen Ginsberg is most famous for his expansive poem "Howl" (1956) which chronicled the fate of his peers in the Beat Generation. The epitome of the freaky New York beatnik, Ginsberg was a shrewd observer of the American political anatomy, and U.S. intervention in Iran never managed to slip below his radar.

In 1960, he skewered anti-Mossadegh propaganda in his poem "Subliminal". During the hostage crisis of 1980, Ginsberg took the opportunity to point out that Iran itself was the hostage of the U.S. for the previous quarter century in his anti-establishment manifesto, "Capitol Air". And in 1991, during the Gulf War in Iraq, Ginsberg raised he subject again in his poem "Just Say Yes Calypso", the third in his 'Calypso' trilogy.

The following is a chronology of relevant writing and commentary by Allen Ginsberg from 1960 to 1994.

'Subliminal' (1960) excerpt

One million editorials against Mossadeq and who knows who Mossadeq is any more?
Me a Democracy? I didn't know my Central Intelligence was arming fascist noodnicks in Iran.
This true story I got from High Sources
Check yr local radio announcer
All I remember's nasty cartoons in N.Y. Mirror long-faced Mossadeq blubbering in a military court in Persia looking the opposite of a serious hair'd Central Intelligence Agent sipping borscht cocktails at a Conservative egghead soirée

-Allen Ginsberg
'Subliminal' (October 1960)

Allen Ginsberg was 27 years old at the time of the 1953 coup. Seven years later, Ginsberg recollects the episode with characteristic skepticism, as well as anger and disbelief over his country's actions.

'Capitol Air' (1980) excerpt

The Generals say they know something worth fighting for
They never say what till they start an unjust war
Iranian hostage media hysteria sucks
The Shah ran away with 9 Billion Iranian bucks

Col. Roosevelt and his U.S. dollars overthrew Mossadeq
They wanted his oil now they got Ayatollah's dreck
They put in the Shah and they trained his police the Savak
All Iran was our hostage quarter-century
That's right Jack

-Allen Ginsberg
'Capitol Air' (1980)

In "Capitol Air", Ginsberg rails against a jumbled litany of worldwide political grievances. Referencing the hostage crisis and the media circus surrounding it, Ginsberg points to the little known history behind the relationship between the U.S. and Iran. Though he mistakenly refers to "Colonel" [Kermit] Roosevelt, at least the incorrect but commonly cited spelling of 'Mossadeq' works with the rhyme scheme.

Astutely, Ginsberg compares the hostage crisis 'hysteria', with the lesser known coup which produced it. "All Iran was our hostage quarter-century.."

"Capitol Air" would become one of Ginsberg's more famous works. Within the next two years, he would perform it live with The Clash and on David Letterman's TV show, marking what is almost certainly the only time that Mossadegh's name has been mentioned in a rock song or on a late night talk show.

'Just Say Yes Calypso' (1991) excerpt

Coming soon...

The Progressive Interview (1994)

Excerpt from The Progressive magazine interview with Allen Ginsberg on August 1, 1994 by Matthew Rothschild, discussing the first Iraq war waged by President George H.W. Bush:

Q: One of my favorite poems in Cosmopolitan Greetings is "After the Big Parade"--about the American public's reactions to Bush's Iraq war. Were you actually at one of those parades here?

Ginsberg: I was down in the parade with a tiny group of people protesting it in front of City Hall. There was a group of maybe ten people amid the millions that were out there under the confetti, and the bunting, and the bands, and the police.

Q: How did the crowd respond to you?

Ginsberg: They ignored us, or they threatened us. So I saw it first hand, the mob hysteria, as in the old Roman mob. And then within two days the entire enthusiasm had evaporated, and within a few months, people realized more and more that the Iraq war was one of the most successful instances of brainwashing ever turned out by Madison Avenue and Government--by control of the airwaves and mass-media censorship.

In hindsight, people realize that they were taken in, that alternative views weren't presented, and that in order to present this war as heroic, you had to ignore some very obvious things-- like the fact that we were building up Saddam Hussein until the very day that we bombed him, and that we had played one gang against another in the Iran-Iraq war.

In a way, we were responsible for the whole Middle East situation. We had overthrown Mossadegh, as I've got in my poem, "Just Say Yes Calypso." Norman Schwarzkopf's father was directly involved in the overthrow of Mossadegh and the training of the Savak. People weren't aware of that. People thought Schwarzkopf was some sort of country bumpkin from the Midwest who got to be general rather than a sophisticated Persian-speaking son of a man who trained the Shah's secret police.

So it was some kind of American karma we were bombing, and people weren't really aware of the historical relevance of the land they were bombing, that this was the Garden of Eden we were bombing, the land of Ur and Abraham. And they didn't realize in a way that it was child molestation, because the average age of Iraqis at the time was only sixteen. The people being bombed were kids!