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Jesus, you're blaming Carter for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?
And the Shah was doomed to fall no matter how much support we gave him. The Shah of Iran was a real son of a ***** and deserved to die a disgrace. Our support of him is an important factor in Middle Eastern (especially Iranian) resentment of American foreign policy.
I suggest you bone up on your history, kiddo.
I suspect I'm the only one who actually was alive when this happened "kiddo." Others could have been brought in. We've done it before. But by abandoning all hope we doomed these people to war and oppression by their own government. As far as resentment goes when you have the ability to make someone eat their lunch, they already resent you. Add to that the fact that these nice folks are a little different from ourselves. We tend to respect differences in others. They tend to execute different people. Being of the Baha'i faith in the US would cause someone to say "really, that's interesting." In Iran being Baha'i could cause you to be executed by a firing squad and having a bill for the bullets used presented to your family. Nice people.
No, I was referring to the Shah, who while he did a lot to modernize Iran (and for that he should get credit for his reforms), was especially ruthless in comforming the populace to his vision.
I may be being a bit harsh on him, since the Ayatollah effectively wound the clock back hundreds of years on Iranian society. The Iranian economy is still feeling the effects of that "revolution".
Iran is and has been on the road to its own destruction since the revolution 1979. The people who live in Iran are still repressed by the government. It's just a different government. And what is possibly the worst outcome of all this is that Iran, what used to be a relatively modern nation by Mideastern standards, has become a prototype for the Islamo-fascist state of the future.
Chasing clouds - The US military have never bee an international police force. they have always been the enforces of the rules that let American companies loot the world. The rest of the world is getting fed up with being robbed by our stooges the World Bank and IMF and our generous oil companies. If we were actually policing the world for everyone's benefit we would have the moral high ground. As it is we are demeaning our servicemen and our national honor to protect a bunch of international thieves.
Chasing clouds - The US military have never bee an international police force. they have always been the enforces of the rules that let American companies loot the world. The rest of the world is getting fed up with being robbed by our stooges the World Bank and IMF and our generous oil companies. If we were actually policing the world for everyone's benefit we would have the moral high ground. As it is we are demeaning our servicemen and our national honor to protect a bunch of international thieves.
A different government could have been installed in 1979. Look at the final outcome. Look who's right next door waiting for us to leave Iraq. Want to know what Iraq is going to be like when we cut and run? Just look at Iran. The biggest disservice we could have possibly done to the people of Iran and the surrounding nations, not to mention Israel, is to permit a fascist Islamic Fundamentalist government to take over. Don't be surprised when thousands of insurgents come across the border following our departure and the civil war that comes after kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Iran is and has been on the road to its own destruction since the revolution 1979. The people who live in Iran are still repressed by the government. It's just a different government. And what is possibly the worst outcome of all this is that Iran, what used to be a relatively modern nation by Mideastern standards, has become a prototype for the Islamo-fascist state of the future.
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Used to be modern? I don't think many American's have a clue as to what Iran is actually like or even realize it has the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East and a fairly substantial Christian population as well.
The following slide show is obviously a "best of" that is probably put out by the tourism industry that is the complete antithesis of your point of view but I suspect that the truth lies between the two perspectives.
Iran might be a lot of things, but a backwards nation full of mud huts and camels is not one of them. In fact I would say it is on par with Saudi Arabia and even less fundamentalist then our friends there.
At least you made the distinction between the government of Iran and its people, kind of like here in America where we have a complete nutjob as President that presides over a diverse nation of pretty decent people.
The Saudi Rulers are not our friends. Democratic Republics can have no truce with feudal autocracy. The people of Saudi Arabia could be our friends but their government is not likely to encourage it.
The same could be said of Iran. Their current government uses our threats as a way of keeping themselves in power. We should have let the original revolution and not returned the shah to power. That counter revolution is a prime example of our interference with a foreign government for the benefit of our financiers and oil companies that did not want to pay full price for Iranian oil. We are reaping what we have sown. Blaming Jimmy Carter for this mess is an absurdity.
Used to be modern? I don't think many American's have a clue as to what Iran is actually like or even realize it has the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East and a fairly substantial Christian population as well.
The following slide show is obviously a "best of" that is probably put out by the tourism industry that is the complete antithesis of your point of view but I suspect that the truth lies between the two perspectives.
Iran might be a lot of things, but a backwards nation full of mud huts and camels is not one of them. In fact I would say it is on par with Saudi Arabia and even less fundamentalist then our friends there.
At least you made the distinction between the government of Iran and its people, kind of like here in America where we have a complete nutjob as President that presides over a diverse nation of pretty decent people.
A number of years ago, I worked in a restaurant that was owned by Iranian-Americans. They left Iran after the revolution. One of these people was a young woman whos father was a general in prerevolutionary Iran. She literally escaped the country by using her sister's ID and passport to get through the airport. If she would have been discovered, they would have hanged her on the spot. The other owner left a concrete business probably worth millions behind to escape the oppression. How is this nation better off. How have her neighbors benefited? How has the world benefited?
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