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Comment by han-tyumi | Hacker News Reader

Yes, yes, the good ol' "liberal, non-violent, and honorable" CIA of the 50s and 60s. So different from the one we have now.

Is this the CIA that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran after he nationalized their oil industry? Or is it the one that installed a dictatorship in Guatemala to stop land reform and tend to the whims of the United Fruit Company?

Maybe it's the organization that murdered the first elected leader of Congo, to keep cheap copper, colbat and uranium flowing? Certainly it can't be the agency that illegally spied on American citizens who fought for Civil Rights or protested against the Vietnam War.

So much for soft power.

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It interesting because the people at the CIA probably could be fairly described as "liberal, non-violent, and honorable". That sort of thing is heavily into banality of evil territory - lovely people, just a bit thoughtless about the effects they were having on huge tracts of the world.

With those types the best you can hope for is at least they act rationally and effectively. It gets really sad when they do tremendous damage for reasons that make little sense, even in context.

It’s the residual Puritanism. Foreign-facing federal agencies like the CIA were the last bastion of American WASPs. I grew up around these people because my dad worked for a contractor for USAID, which was at times a front for the State Department, and was similarly WASPy culturally. They’re lovely people. Soft-spoken, orderly and rule-following, public service-oriented, intellectually curious. But they also have this cultivated detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions without normal gut feelings and common sense getting in the way.

>detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions

Yes, WASP are attracted to universal moral principles. A major WASP institution (namely, a religious denomination) is literally named "Universalism".

> Is this the CIA that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran

Mosaddegh Was not democratically elected, he was appointed by the Shah after the recommendation by the Majlis which itself was largely appointed. Later Mosaddegh rigged a real election and tried to give himself emergency power to dictate law. The Shah and his generals with the help of the US and Britain removed Mosaddegh. Yes the British wanted to get involved because of oil nationalization but Mosaddegh was trying to become a dictator, and alienated a lot of the population.

Majlis means parliament, and with the monarch Shah in control, that makes it a constitutional monarchy. To place a putschist general on par with that is disingenuous; it is a democratic retreat.

To be fair Iran back then wasn't a system like the UK or Sweden where the king's power is limited to signing laws. It worked more like Gulf states today with a much more personal form of government, the Shah could freely appoint ministers and dissolve parliament when he wanted. And his secret police was trained by the CIA.

The British monarch can do that too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unite...

It wasn’t a constitutional monarchy at the time, there were reformers pushing in that direction but the constitution put very few limits on the Shah. The Majlis wasn’t popularly elected then either.

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