Inventing “boogey man” and the New Red Scare

Red Scare in Pearl Square
Fears of an Iranian takeover in Bahrain resemble some of the worst paranoia from the Cold War.
BY BRIAN DOOLEY – OCTOBER 7, 2011 – Foreign Policy

For those too young to remember the hot intensity of the Cold War, the mentality of looking for “Reds under the bed” must seem quaint, if not prehistoric. Even so, those fears were real: The Soviet Union really was trying to stir up trouble for the United States, causing overzealous U.S. officials to sniff the air for the whiff of communism at home or abroad.

In the mid-1980s, I was researching anti-apartheid legislation for Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and was continually questioned by other Capitol Hill staffers about possible Soviet links to the pro-democracy movement in South Africa. Was Bishop Desmond Tutu an unwitting Politburo puppet? Did the Kremlin secretly fund the democracy activists? That guy Mandela… if he’s in jail, he must have done something, right?

Such a simplistic mindset would seem vaguely amusing if it were not reappearing in the context of Bahrain, where the United States appears to be running scared of an alleged Iranian hand in the democracy protests of this year. An Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal op-ed warns darkly about Iranian “machinations,” arguing that the protest movement represents a covert attempt to transform the island kingdom into Iran’s 14th province. The U.S. government, perhaps taking its cue from such rhetoric, is now planning to send $53 million worth of Humvees and missiles to the volatile Bahraini dictatorship, although a joint resolution has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to stop the sale.

As the smallest country in the Middle East, Bahrain sits between the regional superpowers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Its Shiite-majority population is ruled by a Sunni monarchy and Sunni elite. Bahrain’s parliament has few powers, and gerrymandering districts to limit Shiite representation is common practice. When calls for constitutional reforms re-emerged in February, as part of the Arab Spring, they were met with a violent government crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of dozens and the imprisonment of around 1,500 more, many of whom reported a pattern of systematic torture. Dozens of medics have also been targeted — many told me they were arrested and tortured because they treated injured protesters, and confirmed to international media that live ammunition was being used against the demonstrators. …more