    52

    dressed

     in uniforms from an ancient time.  The soldierly garb belonged

    to the era of Cyrus and Xerxes--legendary Iranian rulers.156  2,500 years

    ago, these Persians had built an empire.  The Shah dreamed of doing

    the same.

    Though the country owed much of its progress to the Americans,

    a rabble-rousing clergyman said the Yankees had placed the Iranians in

    chains and robbed them of their self-respect.  The cleric understood the

    needs of the pecking-order far better than the Shah.  Despite the

    increases in the standard of living, the Iranian people were seething

    with frustration.  And contrary to Western assumptions, it wasn't

    because of political oppression.  Savak, the secret police, was brutal.

    But the country offered far more freedom than any of its immediate

    neighbors.

    In 1978, when the man of God called for it, Iranians rioted.  They

    ran through the streets by the hundreds of thousands.  At first, the

    Shah's police and soldiers felt helpless to end the demonstrations.

    Finally, they joined the demonstrators.  The Shah who had given his

    people everything that American policy defines as happiness was

    driven from the country.  And the clergyman who understood the

    pecking order's hungers returned from exile to become Iran's new

    ruler.  He was a man we've met before: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

    The Ayatollah pulled off a pecking order trick of astonishing

    proportions.  He preached a view in which Iran was suddenly at the

    very peak of a new kind of hierarchy.  In his rhetoric, Iranians were

    transformed from mere followers of America to leaders--leaders of an

    Islamic revolution which would soon sweep the world.   The Iranians,

    said the Ayatollah, were morally superior to the infidel dogs, the

    inhuman western devils, who preferred their stereos to the words of

    Mohammed.  The Iranians followed the words of Allah.  The

    Americans did not.  The Iranians championed the cause of

    Mohammed.  The Americans did not.  The Iranians followed the basic

    rules of decency--they kept their women in black, forbade kissing and

    hugging in public, and outlawed the nudity of bathing suits.  The

    Americans flung their shamelessness in the face of all mankind.  The

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