THE TIDE TURNS 333
short, the Six Day war was a crushing setback for world peace, a disaster
for the Muslim world, and not much good in the end even for Israel.
Such was the narrative that unfolded in the Arab heartland after World
War II. Let me go back now and follow another thread of narrative further
east, in the Persian heartland. There too a seminal event took place, almost
as world-changing as the Six Day War, because it established, in the Is-
lamic world, an image of the United States that has proved intractable.
It was only after World War I that Muslims really started taking notice
of the United States, and their first impression was highly favorable. Right
through World War II, they admired America's sleek efficiency, its ability
to pour out wonderful goods, its military strength, especially in light of the
higher values the United States proclaimed-freedom, justice, democracy.
They respected the American argument that its political system could save
people of every nation from poverty and oppression. American idealists
proffered democracy with something of the same ardor enjoyed by reli-
gious movements, making it a competitor to other world-organizing social
ideas such as communism, fascism, and Islam. Religious Muslims may
have rejected America's moral claims, but secular modernist Muslims saw
great hope in it, and found no inherent contradiction between American
ideals and Islam as they understood it.
When Wilson's Fourteen Points came to nothing, Muslims didn't
blame the United States; they blamed the European old guard. In the last
days of World War II, American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt re-
newed America's moral leadership by issuing {with Winston Churchill) the
Atlantic Charter, a document calling for the liberation and democratiza-
tion of all countries. Churchill later said he didn't mean it, but American
leaders never repudiated the charter. In fact, just after the war, the United
States took the lead in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, which was issued by the United Nations, more proof, if any were
needed, that America was committed to supporting political freedom and
democracy everywhere.
All this looked very good to Iranians. In the wake ofWorld War II they
were ready to resume a project dear to the secular modernists among them:
replacing dynastic despotism with homegrown democracy. Reza Shah
Pahlavi had blocked this project for decades, but he was gone, finally: the