Todd Brewster & Peter Jennings (6 page)
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Authors: The Century for Young People: 1961-1999: Changing America
Tags: #History, #United States, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #20th Century, #Historical, #Biography & Autobiography
The revolution in Iran was a rejection of much that the United States stood for. The Ayatollah Khomeini and the religious leaders now in power in Iran saw American culture as lacking moral fiber, a civilization that had grown fat and weak. And with Iran's oil fields in the grip of a hostile power, prices rapidly rose, impressing upon people just how dependent the United States was on foreign oil. But it wasn't until later in the year that the Iranian revolution became a personal issue for most Americans.
On November 4, Iranian students loyal to Khomeini cut the chains on the gates of the American embassy in the capital city of Teheran. They stormed past marine guards and took sixty-six
members of the embassy staff hostage. They demanded the return to Iran of the shah, who was in New York City undergoing cancer treatment.
With mounting horror, Americans watched the evening news to see what would happen. American hostages were paraded blindfolded in front of television cameras by students who burned American flags and shouted “Death to America!” Calling the United States “the Great Satan,” they declared that Americans were their mortal enemies.
President Jimmy Carter seemed helpless to end the crisis. Khomeini considered himself a messenger from God and refused to negotiate. Military threats wouldn't work, for the militant Islamic revolutionaries were willing to die for their cause. “Why should we be afraid?” asked a defiant Khomeini. “We consider martyrdom a great honor.” For 444 days Americans waited, tying yellow ribbons on trees across the nation as a symbol that the hostages were not forgotten.
Barry Rosen, born in 1944, was one of the hostages who endured the long ordeal.
I
n the months before the shah left Iran you could see a tremendous deterioration of the government's power. The Iranian people were up in arms. Every night I would hear shouting on the rooftops,
“Allah hu akbar! Marg bar shah!
God is great, down with the
shah!” I would walk around and then report what was going on back to the United States embassy. Sometimes, of course, I'd get rifle butts stuck in my back and people would tell me to move on. But I could feel it, sense it, smell itâthe regime was falling. The day the shah finally left was one of the most potent and vivid days imaginable. It's difficult to fully understand just how much the Iranian people hated him. And then when Khomeini returned, ecstatic crowds carried him through the streets of Teheran. It was as if the Messiah had landed.
To me, November 4, 1979, seemed like just an ordinary gray, rainy Sunday in Teheran. I was at work at ten o'clock that morning. All of a sudden I heard marching sounds coming from the main avenue in Teheran. I looked out my window and saw Iranian students climbing the gates and jumping over the walls of the embassy. They had photographs of Khomeini on their chest and they were yelling,
“Marg bar Amrika!
Death to America!” The students banged on my door, and then came storming in with clubs and some small arms.
We were taken to a library in the embassy, where the hostage takers interrogated me and my Iranian coworkers. They eventually let all the Iranians go. I had become good friends
with the Iranians in my office, and I cried because I was happy that they were being let go. They cried because they were sure that I was going to be executed. I was tied up and blindfolded and then led out of the library into the courtyard, raindrops hitting me on the head. That's when I started to think about my family, and I began to wonder, “Will I live through the rest of the night?”
My captors dragged me into the cook's quarters, where they took off my shoes and started searching them, trying to tear the heels apart. They thought that I had some secret message machine in the heels of my shoes. They were convinced that we were all CIA agents and would do anything to escape. That's why they tied us up day in and day out.
One of the most wrenching moments in my captivity was when the students tried to get me to sign a letter indicating my crimes against Iran. This young man held an automatic weapon to my head and started to count down from ten to one. It was then that I realized that I would do anything to survive. I wanted to be a good American, and I didn't want to sign something that would state that I was not, but I knew that the best thing to do to survive was to sign whatever needed to be signed, so I did.
The worst pain of it all was brought on by the length of captivity. Not the boredom, but the fear that grows inside of you over a long period of time. The fear of death. A fear that creeps into the subconscious. That, and just not being able to go outside, to see a bird fly, or to take a walk. The physical cruelty, getting beaten up or being pushed around or being blindfolded, was less of a potent force than the lack of freedom.
There was no other alternative but to live. I spent several months sharing a room with a lieutenant colonel named Dave Roeder. He was a man who knew how to survive. He taught me to get up and exercise and to meet each day with purpose. We learned to make small things beautiful. For example, for whatever weird reason, the Iranians gave me the classifieds from the
Washington Post
boat section. Not great reading, but something. Dave actually knew something about boats, so he would describe the different types, and we would both lie down on the floor and we would take a trip on the Chesapeake Bay. Just escaping in our imaginations like that made life worthwhile.
One morning in January a guard came in and said, “Pack your bags. You're leaving.” Just like that. Once again we were bound and blindfolded and then marched to a bus.
We traveled on the bus for what seemed like an interminable amount of time. When it finally stopped, they ripped off my blindfold and pushed me out of the bus. I stumbled past this long line of Iranian guards who spat on me. I was just soaking wet from spit. But I saw this light and an arm waving toward me. It turned out to be the entrance of an Air Algiers plane, so I ran toward it. It seemed so unreal. It was as if we were in another world altogetherâvery blurred, but once we realized we were free, also very beautiful.
Back in the United States we were greeted as heroes. We were so isolated that we didn't realize that we had become the center of the American news, that we had been their purpose for the last 444 days. In some ways, I think the people were celebrating what they believed was American power. But I honestly think that both countries lost. There was a lot of hate on both sides that didn't need to happen. I don't believe we were winners. I believe it was a period of great sadness.
The hostage crisis continued through the 1980 presidential campaign. Americans were exhausted by disappointment, turmoil, and embarrassment. They wanted to feel good about themselves again. And they elected as president a man who promised to let
them do that and to bring the country back to a golden age. That man was Ronald Reagan. In his inaugural address in 1981 Reagan asked Americans to believe once again in their capacity for greatness. And as he spoke the weary hostages were being dragged into the night and pushed aboard an airplane bound for home. The long national nightmare was over.
New Morning
1981â1989
Americans entered the 1980s worn by the events of the previous decade. They longed for a fresh start, and they found it in a new, conservative approach to government. The leader of this conservative “revolution” was the new president, Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan was the most influential president in forty years. Anger over high inflation and the Iranian hostage crisis had pushed Americans to vote President Carter out of office. Reagan, a former actor and governor of California, rallied the nation with nostalgic images of less complicated times. He called upon Americans to return to the values of hard work and self-reliance that had made their country great. To some, Reagan's foreign policy
ideas sounded simplistic and extreme, and his economic policies seemed to blame the poor for their own problems. But his message of good feeling and self-confidence seemed to invigorate the nation.
Richard Viguerie, born in 1933, shared the enthusiasm many Americans felt about President Reagan.
R
onald Reagan was the epitome of America. He was an optimist and a “can-do” type of leader. He believed that today is great, but tomorrow's going to be better. In times of crisis, Reagan was able to reach out to the American people and put his arms around us and bring us together. He was always recognized as the “Great Communicator.” The reason Ronald Reagan was such an effective speaker was because he had a message that resonated with America.
It was no accident that, literally a few minutes after Reagan became president, the hostages were freed. I think that if Carter had been reelected, those hostages would have been there throughout Carter's presidency, because Khomeini knew he had somebody that he could move around like a puppet on a string. But Ronald Reagan had sent a very clear message, which is the old New Hampshire state messageâDon't Tread on
Me. The Iranians weren't 100 percent sure of Ronald Reagan and they weren't gonna take any chances.
Ronald Reagan moved boldly and decisively. The major world leaders saw that they were dealing with a man of strength and that the rules had been changed from the Nixon-Ford-Carter days. They were now dealing with an administration that was going to stand up for its beliefs and its rights. Mr. Reagan had an agenda, and he knew where he was going.
Like Franklin Delano Roosevelt before him, Ronald Reagan was a master communicator. He made people feel that something was getting done. Unlike Roosevelt, however, Reagan did not see the power of the state as a positive tool to help society. He believed that oversize government programs had made people weak and dependent. Where Roosevelt had wanted to save people
with
government, Reagan wanted to save people
from
government.
The essence of Reagan's economic policy was the tax cut. His philosophy was that people who made money should be allowed to keep it. And if the rich had money to spend, it would eventually “trickle down” to the people who had less. This argument allowed him to cut funding for social programs that had been constructed to aid the poor.
At the same time that Reagan cut taxes, he also increased defense spending. His view of the Soviet Union was simple: It was an “evil empire” and must not be coddled. He dramatically enlarged America's supply of nuclear weapons. But with less money coming into the government from taxes and more money going into defense, the federal budget became seriously out of balance.
Nonetheless, the economy seemed to be on the mend. America's standing in international affairs, thanks to Reagan's tough, no-nonsense attitude toward the Soviets, was improving. But all was not rosy. Reagan's trickle-down theory had justified severe cuts in social spending, but the trickling was hard to see. Many people enjoyed the new prosperity, but at the bottom of the ladder, others were falling into deep trouble.
The Reverend Patrick Mahoney, born in 1954, saw a tragedy emerging from President Reagan's economic policies.
W
hat was discouraging to me about President Reagan was that he was the first style-over-substance president. He had great style in front of the public up there, but he was lacking in substance. For example, he talked about church values, but he never went to church. He talked about family values, yet he had an incredibly dysfunctional
family and his children didn't talk to him. He spoke out about drugs, but we saw cocaine wars in south Florida. He wanted to reduce government spending, yet the deficit skyrocketed. President Reagan introduced something very detrimental, and that is this photo-op kind of candidacy. It dumbed down the political debate and made everybody more interested in good sound bites and creative commercials than in real issues. Also Reagan's economic policies made life very difficult for a lot of people. The theory behind Reaganomics was that the rising tide would lift up all the boats. If the already well-to-do started making more money, then it would trickle down to the less well-off and everyone would do better. But in reality that was not the case. I lived in Bristol, Connecticut, in the 1980s. And under Reagan, Bristol experienced this huge boom. I mean, it was great. Everyone was saying, “Aren't things wonderful? Aren't things just spectacular under President Reagan? He's our man. He's lowered interest rates. I'm making money hand over fist.” But that was for people who owned property and who were already fairly well off. For people who didn't have moneyâfor the poorâit was a horrible time. Property values in Bristol doubled or tripled, but so did the rents. And as the rents
went up, the wages of the working class stayed the same, and suddenly many people couldn't afford to live in their own homes anymore. In Bristol, as in a lot of America, entire families found themselves without a home. These were not lazy people. They were not sluggards or substance abusers. They were committed, dedicated men and women who were trying to make a difference in their own life, and suddenly they couldn't afford a place to live.
So when I hear about the legacy of Mr. Reagan, and I hear of the good times of the Reagan years, I can say that I personally benefitedâthe value of my home more than tripledâbut the same factors that allowed for me to make money turned out to be very hard on the working class. The trickle-down theory just stopped at those who already had money, and many of those who were already struggling to make ends meet were forced out into the streets. It was tragic.
For the poor, life was getting harder. Homelessness was on the rise. So were drug abuse and the crime that came with it. But the Reagan era encouraged many to distance themselves from these social problems. The social consciousness of the sixties and seventies now seemed to have faded, a victim of
impatience, cynicism, and, for some, a firm belief that government programs rarely worked. At the top of the ladder of opportunity, some wealthy Americans spent their newly made money more freely and publicly on themselves.