January 12, 1980 — Detroit Free Press (Letter)
| Arash Norouzi The Mossadegh Project | March 2, 2026 |
Letter to the Editor of a Michigan newspaper on the history of U.S. intervention abroad, part of a collection of letters responding to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
Another letter writer (George R. Gatler) said, “Recent events have shown that it is likely that the KGB will do to Khomeini what the CIA did to Mossadegh.”
January 12, 1980
WITH ALL THE hullabaloo going on about the Soviet role in Afghanistan, sanctimoniously orchestrated by Carter’s administration, we should not forget our own involvement in other countries’ affairs.
[President Jimmy Carter]
Have we forgotten the Dominican Republic? President Johnson sent our troops there in the ‘60s to quell a popular uprising that we were told was communist. [Operation Power Pack, under Lyndon B. Johnson in
1965] Remember Vietnam?
We were there fighting seven years with all our might, short of nuclear bombs.
What of other places where our troops were not physically in the open: Chile, Cuba, Congo (now Zaire)? What of Iran, where the national leader of the country was overthrown through CIA machinations, which has culminated in the present
crisis? [Premier Mossadegh removed in 1953]
I am one who does not subscribe to our myopic narcissism that what we do to extend our influence or change events in other countries is right, but when the Soviets do the same thing, it is wrong.
The present Soviet-Afghan affair mirrors our prevalent image.
S. ROGALLA
[Steve Rogalla?]
Related links:
Iranian Students Protest Gen. William Westmoreland at FSU (1978)
American woman: U.S. Can’t Keep Out of Iranian Affairs (1980 letter)
“Selective Outrage” Over Iran Hostage Crisis — 1979 Letter To The New York Times
MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”
