    53

    Iran

    ians were the righteous men who would scourge the continents in

    the name of God.  The Americans, on the other hand, were the

    contemptible  followers of the Great Satan.157

    The Ayatollah had turned the pecking order upside down.  The

    Americans, the children of the devil, were at the bottom.  And the

    Iranians--the blessed of Allah-- were on the top.

    What does this indicate about our foreign policy?  Poverty is a

    relative term.  The poor are simply those on the lowest rungs of the

    hierarchical ladder.  Move everyone up--including the poor--and the

    impoverished will still be on the underside.  The poor in the Shah's

    Teheran had things Iran's ancient emperors never dreamed of.  Cyrus

    the Great might have offered half his kingdom for one slum-dwelling

    Iranian's transistor radio or for the antibiotics given to a single

    poverty-stricken child.  But what had made old Cyrus a god on earth?

    Not his food, clothing and shelter.  His position on the top of the

    pecking order.

    The nations of the third world accept our handouts gladly.  They

    even ask for more.  But they often hate us for our "generosity."  They

    resent us as bitterly as the New Guinean big man humbled by a flood

    of earthly goods or the Kwakiutl chief shamed by his rival's largesse.

    Even if we eliminate starvation and disease, only one thing will

    allow third world nations to overcome the emotional laceration of their

    pecking order fate: an upward move.  But such is the nature of the

    hierarchical ladder that whenever a creature moves up,  someone else

    must be shoved down.  Many would like the one stomped toward the

    bottom to be us.

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