No, Politico, Bernie Sanders' Views on the C.I.A. Were Not 'Extreme'

Since its founding, it has been an article of faith at Tiger Beat On The Potomac that history consists of whatever popped up on the handheld electronic device 10 minutes ago. It also has been an article of faith in those quarters that its customers are as into "winning the morning" as its original founding geniuses were, and that those same customers are therefore as dumb as posts. Hence, we get Michael Crowley's opening paragraph of his "deep dive" into Bernie Sanders' radical past.

In his most recent debate with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders befuddled some viewers with an arcane reference to a 1953 U.S.-backed coup in Iran, which Sanders called an example of America's history of "overthrowing governments."

Those befuddled viewers are the reason that TBOTP exists and that the Republican presidential nominating process is being dominated by a vulgar talking yam. The overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran—and the subsequent installation of the Shah—is the source of all the destructive ill-will that has plagued the relationship between these two countries to this day. It is the American ur-meddling in a century of it and it's as relevant to a discussion of current Middle East affairs as a critique of the Syrian civil war is. We continue.

One big difference between then and now: Forty years ago, Sanders didn't just complain about CIA interventions abroad; he called for abolishing the spy agency altogether. The CIA is "a dangerous institution that has got to go," Sanders told an audience in Vermont in October 1974. He described the agency as a tool of American corporate interests that repeatedly toppled democratically elected leaders—including, he said, Mosaddegh. The agency was accountable to no one, he fumed, "except right-wing lunatics who use it to prop up fascist dictatorships."


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Despite Crowley's best attempts to turn what Bernie Sanders said four decades ago into a Strawberry Alarm Clock lyric, more than a few Very Serious People down through history have thought the CIA was a bad concept that became, in practice, a truly terrible idea. That this position today can be caricatured as something "extreme" is a measure of how sheeplike the nation has become with regard to its national security.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a42359/politico-bernie-sanders-cia/