The war in Iran had just started. I was meeting an American friend for coffee in San Francisco. There were “No Kings” posters on shop windows around us, symbols of protest against US President Donald Trump. San Francisco is a liberal bastion so that was not too surprising. Nor was it surprising that my friend was aghast about the war.
“It’s so embarrassing travelling anywhere as an American,” she said. “People are either upset with you. Or they look at you with pity.It’s terrible. We were supposed to be the good guys.”
I remember looking at her quizzically. I am no expert in American foreign policy but even I could not but be aware of the country’s patchy record on democracy in many parts of the world. Much of the turmoil in Iran itself could be traced back to the CIA helping topple the left-liberal government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and propping up the Shah and Savak, his dreaded secret police, as an American bastion during the Cold War. That paved the way for the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini.
But in some ways my friend was also correct. America was always supposed to be “the good guys”. Even in Iran. In 1909 an American teacher died trying to fight to advance what was called the Constitutional Revolution against royalist forces. When the Paris Peace talks happened after World War I, Iran was under Allied occupation and Washington advocated on behalf of Tehran.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
The image of the “good guys” was baked into the Declaration of Independence. July 4 2026 was the 250th anniversary of that founding document whose very Preamble said all men (sorry, women) are created equal and bestowed with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That I realise in retrospect, was the real American Dream. Britain ruled so much of the world it could boast the sun never set on the British Empire. But there was no British Dream like there was an American Dream.
It certainly inspired those striving to bring independence to India.” Indian parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor writes that India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru too too believed, like America’s founders that political independence had to come with social and economic justice.
“And his historic ‘tryst with destiny’ address, delivered on the eve of independence in 1947, carried the Declarations’s sense of moral purpose and historical rupture,” writes Tharoor.
NEHRU1:
When I lived in the US, I didn’t really think too much about the Declaration of Independence. I was happier with independence with a lower-case i. Away from the watchful eyes of family and neighbours I felt free to explore myself, even reinvent myself. The American Dream was about earning in dollars, pitchers of Long Island iced teas, and long drives down endless freeways. Even freeway had that word free in it.
America taught me to stand on my own feet. I burned my dal; wrecked my second-hand car; got mugged,. But along the way I realised the American Dream was not just about striking it rich. It was about the possibility of reinvention in a country which placed your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness dead centre. I went to America as a software engineer. I returned from America as a writer. I had always loved to write but I do not think I would have the courage to change tracks without having been to America.
I had no degree in journalism or creative writing. But the woman who was hiring me, a Macarthur genius, had seen my work in the local Indian magazine and decided to take a chance on me. As we sat in the old Prince Hotel in downtown San Francisco, sipping red wine, she seemed to embody the infinite possibility of the American Dream where anything was possible. She hired me as an editor and writer. Then one day asked, “Do you want to try and host a radio show?” I had no training in broadcasting either but the American Dream was not fazed by the possibility of failure. It was a belief in what a future President would call the Audacity of Hope.
Now another American President vows to Make America Great Again. But I always thought the real allure of America was its enthusiastic conviction in its own greatness as derived from that Declaration of Independence. The American Dream was always its greatest export. Once that dream allowed us to reinvent ourselves in the pursuit of happiness. As America turns 250, it seems Donald Trump wants to reinvent the American Dream itself.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW