This is one of the saddest legacies. The amount of empathy for America was shocking, absolutely staggering, after 9/11. There were countries with every reason to hate America, but they too joined in the vigils and were respectful of the loss.
I doubt you'll ever see anything like that again.
That enormous stockpile of goodwill, like the US budget surplus, was uselessly frittered away within years and everyone was back to hating America again.
If there's another attack of this magnitude I think the whole world will be so afraid of what America will do in retaliation that they won't have any strength left for empathy.
the people of Iran also have every reason to dislike their own dictatorial government [1]; empathy towards the USA might also be a way to display attitudes towards their own system of government, such a display would otherwise be suppressed.
i didn't understand that, why do you think that observing something is disingenuous ? what is the difference between 'assigning ulterior motives' and 'observing reality' ?
I would also think that political persecutions are also very disingenuous, I think that it is one of the most wicket things that any government could possibly do.
Your observation is a non-sequitur, and the conclusions you draw are not based on facts. The fact we do have is that they said they did a thing for a particular reason. Nobody has "observed" Iranians protesting against their own government in the form of an empathic reaction to 9/11.
At the very least, what degree of organization are you imagining would motivate and populate an ironic protest like that, and who exactly is the audience who would see through the irony? "Ah yes, the world thinks we're being nice to the US, but really we're stickin' it to The Man." It's hard enough to get 5 people together for a practical joke that doesn't get spoiled by someone.
I'm sorry if "dictatorial Iran" is a personal hobby horse of yours, but you're really kind of threadshitting by bringing it into the conversation.
Lastly, it appears you don't know what "disingenuous" means.
>I'm sorry if "dictatorial Iran" is a personal hobby horse of yours, but you're really kind of threadshitting by bringing it into the conversation.
may i point out that you seem to be ignoring the human rights situation in Iran, that is disrespectful of the victims of the current regime - and that is "disingenuous", at least by the dictionary definition of the word.
>I'm sorry if "dictatorial Iran" is a personal hobby horse of yours ...
>... appears you don't know what "disingenuous" means.
really, that's what i am writing about, day in and day out; very civil discourse of yours. needs improvement.
Although it was the CIA=led coup of the democratically elected government that led conditions to go so extreme with the Islamic Republic and Anti-Western sentiments
"Democratically elected" is one of those wonderful phrases, like "(People's) Democratic Republic" that always means the exact opposite of what the words mean.
Mossadegh never won a popular election. He became Prime Minister by assassinating the previous guy, the Parliament then made him Prime Minister. After he got power, he pardoned the assassin, btw.
I have seen no evidence it was by Mossadeq. The assassin was a member of an extremist Islamic group, not Mossadeq's secular National Front. You are right as far as him being released during Mossadeq's administration but there are many possible explanations for his release other than Mossadeq playing a role in the assassination. There were many other factions and political movements at play at that time.
As far as I know Mossadeq was not an especially violent man. He had the option of putting down the protests that led to his deposition but refused to give the order.
Did you actually experience the "brutality of [S.A.V.A.K.]" first hand or is this something you've read?
One of my uncles, pretty high up in the Tudeh (Communist) Party, spent two tours in Shah's prisons as a political prisoner. He also spent one tour in the Ayatollahs' prisons for the same issue: being a communist. A few years ago, when he came visiting States side, I asked him about it.
What he told me was that the Shah's prisons were a joke compared to the ones run by IRI. I have fond memories of him from the late 70s as a very self confident and charming man. Per family gossip, after his release from IRI's prisons he barely said a word for 2 years and was broken.
As for "image", it may interest the younger HN reader to know that the very meme of "Shah the brutal dictator" started in the early 70s in the West, with the (finally) now fully established role played by "human rights" organizations that are fronts for Western intelligence services.
Yes, SAVAK is a dark stain, having been trained by FBI and MOSSAD contrary to long standing Iranian mores and standards of conduct.
But I can point you to youtube videos of public trials of political prisoners during the Shah's regime and challenge you to produce ONE for the multitude of ("brutalized") political prisoners now held in Guantanemo and other undisclosed locations.
If you read the original transcripts and testimonies you will see that the role of the CIA was nowhere as dominant and succesful in this power struggle as widely prpagated. Actually the CIA was of the opinion that the coup had failed and the state department already started to draft communications to Mossadegh when, on the next day, surprisingly people went to the street for the Shah.
I guess the narrative of the evil, efficient and powerful CIA suits the US goverment as much as it does Iran.
Honestly, people were too shocked to hate America, and for once, perhaps the only time in recent history, America seemed humbled. It was hit with something so big, so nasty, that the usual bravado fell away and America, as a collective, was left reeling. The whole world was in complete shock.
In that moment we were all willing to let history go away, to embrace America for the victim it was.
It was, briefly, a return to the America that the world loved: The one that built a country from the "wretched refuse" of other countries, that made the working class something less than serfs, that made enormous sacrifices to liberate Europe from tyranny.
"Photo ops"? It wasn't that. Change in foreign policy? There wasn't time for those changes to go into effect before America was back to its old self, only instead of fighting some endless war against "communism" the new enemy was "terrorism" and instead of Vietnamese it was "Muslims". Of having "Freedom Fries" because France wouldn't buddy up and invade a sovereign country for no reason.
There was a very short gap between vigils in the street around the world, in places that had boundless hate for America, because 9/11 is not the sort of thing you'd wish on your worst enemy.
Call it naïve if you want, but we were all willing to be naïve that day.
It was, briefly, a return to the America that the world loved: The one that built a country from the "wretched refuse" of other countries, that made the working class something less than serfs, that made enormous sacrifices to liberate Europe from tyranny.
This is a highly romanticised take on how other countries might have once perceived the US.
My feeling is that Iran is a far better natural ally of the United States than Saudi Arabia. The average Iranian is probably far more amenable to western liberal values than the average person from Saudi Arabia.
Iran was THE ally of the United States until the Revolution. We didn't trust the Israelis, who made it very clear they were in it for themselves, the Saudis in the 60's and 70's were not very amenable to US interests - Iran was a stable, regional power with a westernized populace and enough power to counterbalance Soviet influence and Middle Eastern stubbornness. They were such an important ally that when they elected a moderately socialist president who didn't want to play the Cold War game, the US and UK freaked out and installed a monarch.
That's not accurate. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi became Shah in 1941, after his father was forced to abdicate by the British and Russians. The CIA certainly worked with the Shah to remove Mosaddegh from power (in 1953), but this didn't happen right after he became prime minister (he wasn't elected per se, but appointed by the Shah and approved by the legislature). Rather, this came about after a long and complex political struggle (both internal and external), the end of which saw Mosaddegh dissolving the legislature and gaining emergency powers including the power to personally create laws by fiat.
> The US and UK freaked out and installed a monarch.
This propaganda story of the West needs to die. (They never forgave the Shah for being critical of them in the 70s and to this date their media lists this poor man as one of the "worst tyrants of 20th century". Same century that gave us Stalin, Hitler, Mao, PolPot, .... The man was a saint compared to most world leaders, then and now.)
No one installed a monarch in Iran. The late Shah of Iran, who very much cared for Iran, was indeed permitted to succeed his father, Reza Shah ("the great"), by the occupying Alied powers (who had invaded the neutral Iran). This 'transition' to nominal power 'permitted' by external powers that occupied the entirety of Iran is a fact of Iranian history. (In fact, before accepting CIA/NYTimes account of '53 and the Shah of Iran, you may want to read up on the history of Iran from 1850 to 1950.)
From that date, until the counter-coup of 1953 in which US and UK participated alongside quite a substantial subset of Iranian society, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi stayed well within the limits of Iranian constitution's limits on royal power. One noteworthy aspect of being the Shah of Iran under the constitutional regime was the ability to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister.
Dr. Mossadegh, a member of the Majlis (people's assembly) was indeed put forward by that body as the Prime Minister and the Shah did formally appoint him. After the good Dr. managed to alienate most of his internal allies -- the Mullahs and the Communist Party of Iran -- he assumed dictatorial powers. He even ran an election with "99%" yes vote for his assuming such powers. That is the famous "election" the propaganda organs of the West keep mentioning.
The Shah dismissed the Dr. from his office. The Dr. refused to accept this, contrary to the constitution of Iran. The Shah feared for his life, and fled. And meanwhile back in Iran, elements of Iranian military, landed gentry, Mullahs, etc. who no longer supported the (dismissed) Prime Minister organized a counter coup. So, New York Times notwithstanding, little Kermit Roosevelt did not all by his lonesome and a suitcase full of dollar bills create a coup to "install" the legal, standing, Shah of Iran.
What happend to the Shah after '53, was that he had decided to push for stability in Iran and began to overstep the constitutional limits. It was during this period that Iran went from helpless victim of the insatiable greed of the British and ambitions of the Russians to a healthy state. It was only then that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi accepted coronation.
And the apparently alarming development of Iran actually got to the point that Iran began to loom as a strategic threat to Western hegemony in the Persian Gulf, having taken over the security role of British in the Persian Gulf with America's blessing and material support; establishing OPEC as a power player; and having publicly announced in '73 that "in 1979" when the oil contracts forced on a bankrupt Iran in '53 reached their term, that Iran would no longer accede to the aggregious demands of the Western Oil Cartel (the famous "seven sisters"). Surprisingly enough, it was precisely in 1979 that "revolution" broke out in Iran and BBC Persian service kindly began announcing the Ayatollah's messages and demonstration schedule. (Fact.)
No one installed our King. Good and bad, warts and all, he was OUR King, our Shahanshah, and we Iranians accept full responsibility for the matter.
This was a really interesting and educational post. Thanks for taking the time to lay it all out.
Yes, you are right that I glossed over a lot of the details of what happened in 1953. I thought this was appropriate given the context of the broader point I was trying to address - namely, the huge strategic importance of Iran to the West.
This is kind of a big problem I have with talking about politics and history - either you gloss over important details to make a point, or you have to write a book. I think the myth of Kermit Roosevelt and his bag of money endures, not (just) because of propaganda, but because it is 'true enough' - it serves to put a national event within the regional context of the decline of British/rise of American influence, and the global narrative of the Cold War.
What a load of crap! Seems like this poor king of yours didn't do much wrong. I wonder why wikipedia claims the whole country united to get rid of him:
On March 30 and 31 (Farvardin 10, 11) a referendum was held over whether to replace the monarchy with an "Islamic Republic" – a term not defined on the ballot. Khomeini called for a massive turnout[193] and only the National Democratic Front, Fadayan, and several Kurdish parties opposed the vote.[193] It was announced that 98.2% had voted in favor.[193]
History is written by the winners. Perhaps the OP you're responding to, actually lived through these events and have their own opinion on the matter, not derived from a dubious collective source but rather through personal observation.
Part 4 [4] of this series directly discusses the propaganda regarding these events. Unlike pawadu, I do not consider wikipedia to be a definitive source, but the talk page [5] should provide some insight regarding the tug of war that this page must have gone through! ;)
If you're agreeing that the US was involved in the Mossedegh coup, it's only sufficient to say so. Not to insist in apparent contradiction of that fact that the effort was led by what Noam Chomsky calls the junior partner in the Middle East, Britain.
Yes, Britain precipitated the effort. The US, however, enabled its success.
Everyone already "knows" the US was "involved" in the 1953 coup but very little more. Britain was not the junior partner - as you say Chomsky thinks - but the instigator of the entire operation.
Britain has been deeply involved in the Persia/Iran for hundreds of years including multiple occupations and coups. In 1921 the British installed original Shah Pahlavi, father of the Shah Pahlavi deposed in the 1979 revolution. And before Pearl Harbor brought the US into WWII the British - in cooperation with the Soviet Union! - occupied Iran.
If Britian had not been weakened by WWII and terrible economic policy it is unlikely that they would have spent a year begging the US to assist them in Iran. Until this time the US had little involvement in the region.
We luckily live in a time (post 2013) when you can read the CIA's own fascinating history of the event:
I'd slightly misspoken: it's not Chomsky, but the British foreign office itself which coined the "junior partner" label, Chomsky merely notes the fact:
"Well, the US took over from Britain in the Middle East and, in fact, much of the world, after the Second World War. In fact actually, replaced Britain and France. France was summarily expelled— they weren’t given the time of day. Britain however, was given a role. It was given the role of “junior partner”, as the British foreign office rather ruefully described it, accurately. Britain was going to be our lieutenant— the fashionable word is “partner”— as they were described by a senior adviser in the Kennedy administration. That’s reasonably accurate— you’re seeing an example of it right now. The lieutenant is doing its job— the attack-dog, maybe."
Your CIA reference supports my and others' in this thread essential claim: "Recently, the CIA has declassified a number of records relating to the 1953 coup, including a version of an internal history that specifically states the agency planned and helped implement the coup."
The matter of the British instigating the action isn't in question, and hasn't been questioned. The relative roles of the US and British -- applied, again, to the middle east as a whole, by the British foreign office itself, is. You have been profoundly insensitive to this distinction.
I do appreciate the CIA document reference.
You seem to think you're arguing with me over something. Unfortunately, half of what you're arguing is over things I didn't say or misreadings of things I did say. The other half is over points of agreement.
Both are tiresome.
I doubt this conversation will progress, so will leave this as my final comment.
> My feeling is that Iran is a far better natural ally of the United States than Saudi Arabia.
That's probably true except for Israel. The government of SA is more or less neutral toward Israel, not so the government of Iran.
Interestingly the exact opposite is true of the people of Iran vs SA. I believe the average person in Iran hates Israel less than the average person in SA.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that as shale production diminishes the importance of both the House of Saud and the declining declining value of Russian energy exports, Israel pivots back to Iran. Many sharp analysts predicted the US's pivot to Iran for over half a decade before it visibly started to happen, and many of those same analysts don't subscribe to the prevailing media narrative that Iran's religion necessarily constrains it to alignment with Arab nations, rather than Israel or the US.
Actually rhyming is a question I don't know the answer to: is the character for Han dynasty the same as for what are called Han Chinese people today? I'm not sure if I was punning or describing the same ethnic group.
I disagree with that, but no matter: Iran and Israel have allied as recently as the 20th century, right up until the end of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979.
Disagree. Its a complex game. If the US pisses off Israel there one true friendly in the middle east is gone. Israel's presence and allegance in the middle east gives the US a bigger military influence into the region.
In regards to game theory it's better for the US to have Israel as an ally and make an enemy of Iran than the opposite. Don't forget that Israel has nuclear weapons and the country would not hesitate to use them in self defense. Also while the Saudi's are scum, you'd have a situation worse than Iraq if you removed them from power.
In the end there's no great answer, just one that has a not as worse outcome.
>>If the US pisses off Israel there one true friendly in the middle east is gone.
I'm not sure I'd call Israel a "true friend." At a high level they may be ideologically aligned with the West, but they're simply using the USA to advance their own interests.
Actually, the US didn't have much to do with Israel's early development of nuclear weapons. It was the French who helped them setup a nuclear reactor originally. They also had many (Jewish) former Soviet scientists who fled to Israel. The strong US-Israel military relationship is a more recent development.
> Didn't the US originally provide those nuclear weapons?
Developed independently of the US[1], in cooperation with the apartheid government of South Africa. South Africa went on to become the first (if not only) country to voluntarily give up it's nuclear weapons program, right on the cusp of black rule.
Officially, the US does not/will not acknowledge Israel's nuclear capability.
If there was no oil in the region the US wouldn't care and Israel would be a non-factor.
Since there is oil, the US needs reliable partners. Saudi Arabia (totalitarian regime with an abysmal human rights record) and Israel (actively engaging in war crimes and apartheid) are the best America can manage.
Saudi Arabia has more money than they know what to do with, and they're easily placated by selling them advanced weapons. Israel is on a much tighter budget and is more militarily vulnerable so they need a lot more help. That they've pissed off everyone in their immediate environment doesn't help, either.
Sadly, pre-revolution Iran and pre-civil war Lebanon were vibrant, flourishing countries. Then some geo-political meddling went down and here we are, a total mess.
Israel has an outsized role in US politics for reasons that have nothing to do with oil. In fact the US ability to maneuver in the Middle East would have been significantly less constrained with oil producing countries if Israel wasn't an ally.
The US was initially a reluctant ally with Israel. The Soviet Union was actively arming Israel's Arab neighbors and fanning the flames of war to win influence with oil producing Arab states. At the same time the US had embargoes on selling arms to Israel because it was reluctant to fan the flames of war and also to antagonize Israel's Arab neighbors.
Unbeknownst to the US Israel had developed a nuclear weapons capability and at the start of the Six Day war Israel felt threatened enough to deploy them. In what must have been an interesting phone call Israel informed the US both of their nuclear weapons capability and that they were going to nuke Cairo. In order to dissuade Israel from this course of action the US promised swift delivery of modern anti-tank weapons and depleted their Western European inventory of these weapons. This helped turn the tide of the conflict and reduce potential of a nuclear exhange in the Middle East.
The result of the Six Day War was that the US committed to keeping Israel at par with its Arab neighbors conventional military capabilities if Israel would keep its nuclear capability in check.
This still plays an active role in the US and Israeli relationship and was even a factor in the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program but the nuances are rarely picked up by the US press.
Israel also plays an outsized role in US politics because it is an influential issue with Jewish voters and also, oddly, Evangelicals. Evangelicals see the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel as a prerequisite to the rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Great article on how the delicate compromises in the Middle East were almost toppled by a cow:
If you are going to post so much material read it at least, it wasn't until the after the Six Day war when Israel had even began to build it's nuclear arsenal, by 67 it barely had amassed enough plutonium to build even a single weapon.
Also there was no need for Israel to use it's nuclear weapons during the Six Day war, it destroyed the Egyptian Air Force within the first 5 hours of the war.
I think you are confusing a lot of "facts" here, your story might fit more with the 1973 war, but during that war if were the soviets who've actively moved theater level nuclear weapons into Egypt and the US had put pressure on Israel to stop it's advancement.
Overall if you read slightly better sources you would see that the Six Day war actually pushed the Israeli weapon program back, France have stopped the cooperation with Israel and the knock-out victory that the Israelis have dealt to the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria as as gaining control over the Sinai Peninsula which meant that Egypt can no longer blockade Israel as it lost the controls over the straits of Tiran made the need for a bomb not as urgent.
The nuclear program has really stepped up after the 1973 war both because Israel decided that the added geographical depth of the Sinai wasn't sufficient and because the Soviets have actually pushed weapons into the theater which meant that Israel needed a MAD option and quickly.
It has been a couple of years since I last read through the material and confused the Six Day War with the Yom Kippur War. Another correction is that while the Soviet Union was supplying Syrian and Egyptian forces it wasn't a war that the Soviet Union instigated (unlike the Six Day War).
For those who don't want to wade through the bulk of the material (which is still fascinating) the relevant history begins is Section III of the document and relevant sections condensed below:
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, obviously not at his best at a press briefing, was, according to Time magazine, rattled enough to later tell the prime minister that “this is the end of the third temple,” referring to an impending collapse of the state of Israel. “Temple” was also the code word for nuclear weapons... The Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was notified of the alert several hours later on the morning of 9 October....
Israeli commandos flew to Fort Benning, Georgia to train with the new American TOW anti-tank missiles and return with a C-130 Hercules aircraft full of them in time for the decisive Golan battle. American commanders in Germany depleted their stocks of missiles, at that time only shared with the British and West Germans, and sent them forward to Israel.
Thus started the subtle, opaque use of the Israeli bomb to ensure that the United States kept its pledge to maintain Israel's conventional weapons edge over its foes. There is significant anecdotal evidence that Henry Kissinger told President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, that the reason for the U.S. airlift was that the Israelis were close to “going nuclear.”
If you relying on the USAF document don't, it's not even that well researched, the fact that it was published in a USAF publication doesn't mean much, this is editorial/thesis level of analysis not a policy paper or official NSC briefing.
The timeline of all of these events do not make any sense and are with odds with official declassified Israeli and US documents.
The TOW missile part is especially humourous.
P.S.
By the time the first US airlift has landed in Israel, the Israelis have already broken through the Egyptian lines, the 2nd Egyptian army was surrounded and cut off and the Israelites crossed the Suez canal.
Overall the reason the US agreed for the airlift was because the soviets were already running airlifts into Egypt and the US did not want to risk the soviets deciding to commit troops (well other than "advisers").
Recent declassified documents about the CIA briefings to Nixon also show that the Soviet actually transported nuclear material into Egypt during the 1973 war, this was what put the US on high alert, and it's also the reason why they sent their SR-71's over Israel and the Sinai and the pressing the Israeli government to hold their advance or they'll release the photographs to the UN.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/26/opinions/secret-briefings-...
"...win influence with oil producing Arab states..."
Yeah, nothing to do with oil.
It's all about oil. That whole area is about oil. A case could be made that World War I was about oil, that British naval supremacy depended on it, and everything since then is a mostly direct cascade from that.
Also don't forget that the extreme Evangelicals believe that the establishment of and subsequent destruction of Israel is a necessary precursor to the Rapture. What a psychotic viewpoint.
"...for reasons that have nothing to do with oil"
"...win influence with oil producing Arab states..."
This is cherry picking sentence fragments to produce a misleading statement. The GP clearly states that US involvement in Israel was to avoid Israel using a nuclear weapon, not because of any interest in oil.
The US has had an interest in Israel long before nuclear weapons were a factor.
Stability is only a concern because of the critical suppliers there. Notice how little interest is paid to places like central Africa where, apart from Nigeria, there's no productive oil fields.
Iran is the inverse of most middle eastern countries. The elites in Iran hold anti-western sentiments while the common people are a little more liberal in their views towards America. Most middle eastern countries have the situation reversed.
Not quite. Fundamentally, pre-revolutionary Iran had (and modern Iran still seems to have) the same pattern as other middle-eastern countries: a Westernized, liberal-friendly urban middle-upper class, and a traditionalist, Islam-focused lower-class and rural population. And, as is also typical, the westernized component overestimated its own strength. Many of them actually supported the revolution, expecting that it would bring a democratic or perhaps socialist government (remember, socialism is also a Western ideology). Instead they got swept over by the Islamist faction, which had the support of the masses.
This happens over and over in the Middle East. Syria is the most recent example. The urban middle class revolted against Assad hoping for democracy, but instead their war got completely taken over by the much more powerful islamists. Now they are between a rock and a hard place.
If you have any middle eastern friends, they are probably quite modern, liberal and friendly to Western values. I know mine are. But there is a strong selection bias there. The real "common people" don't go to study in a European university.
I have the same impression. Unfortunately the Saudis have the oil and that makes them valuable allies. Whereas Iran is basically at war with Israel, which means the US will never be able to be in good terms with them.
To be fair, Iran is the largest exporter of religiously inspired terrorism in the world, bar none. No other country has a deep institutional commitment to cultivating and supplying terrorism that can match Iran.
Edit: I'd encourage all the downvotes butt hurt by this truth to learn a little more about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Quuds forces. No other country has a special forces dedicated to cultivating, training and supply in terrorists worldwide (groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are only two examples out of many). We're not talking a one-off phenomena, rather a multi-decade program that has split the world into sectors and has dedicated special forces in each area. This is why you have IRG trying to cultivate Islamic extremism in Venezuela, and bombings of Jewish community centers in Argentina. It's literally not a contest; Iran has been the most skilled and successful sponsor of religious terrorism in the world.
That's a bit glib; much like the USA there are a wide variety of opinions and what the conservative-leaning government chooses to do doesn't necessarily align with what the people want.
In Iran that is due to the Ayatollah Khomeini and his crew. (Nominally he isn't a dictator, in theory he is, in reality there are politics and practical considerations.)
In the USA, it is due to Republican gerrymandering (total votes cast for Senate and House slightly favor Democrats, but they don't hold majorities in either house. Same for state legislatures - half of the republican controlled states had majority votes for Democrats).
That's extremely hard to believe given that 9/11 was most likely paid for by official Saudi money and that it is well known that they have exported tons of people to Syria and Isis
I disagree with the supposition 9/11 was proven to be a state sponsored attack, showing that individuals inside the Saudi government funneled money to terrorism isn't equivalent to saying that Saudi government planned the attack.
You're ignoring the main thrust of my argument, that the Iranian government is dominated by religious extremists who sincerely believe it is their religious duty to spread their theocratic revolution across the world.
To this end the Iranian government has been closely involved in cultivating religious terrorism across the world for decades. You say that people expelled from Saudi Arabia end up in IS, this claim pales in comparison to the training, logistical support and technical expertise Iran directs to groups it helped create like Hamas and hezbollah. When american soldiers are killed by an IED in Iraq, it is most likely Iranian special forces that taught those terrorists how to make the IED, supplied the materials for it, and work closely with said groups to track their lethality and suggest improvements. They've literally dedicated engineers to inventing new IEDs to help penetrate American personnel carriers and kill more American troops.
Again, the difference here is everything I just said is the Iranian government formally coordinating with terrorists across the world in order to improve their lethality, not some rogue faction.
> the Iranian government is dominated by religious extremists who sincerely believe it is their religious duty to spread their theocratic revolution across the world.
The same is true of the USA. Whether you agree with them or not is highly dependent on whether you stand to be a beneficiary of the spoils of their wars, or not.
And, btw, the CIA has exported far, far more terror than the IRG ever has.
I personally find the subject-changing 'what-aboutism'of Chomsky-ists tiring and repitive, but I'll bite.
Iran is currently the largest exporter of religiously inspired extremism, bar none. They are not engaged in short-term realpolitik that installs favorable governments in previously unfavorable countries. The IRG and Quds forces are true believers who see it as their duty to cultivate religious extremism across the world, and have been practicing their trade for the past several _decades_. There is no other country in the world that has been as deeply committed at all levels of government to fomenting sectarian violence throughout the world for nearly as long, and this is why Iran has such a powerful sphere of influence. These groups see the success of clients like Hamas and Hezbollah as their crowning achievements, and have been actively cultivating similar groups for the past several decades.
Again, the indisputable fact that I keep harping on is that Iran is the largest exporter of religiously inspired violence, bar none.
If the same was true of Saudi Arabia there is no doubt western liberals would have no problem publicly flagellating themselves, but since America is currently hostile towards Iran there are inevitably 'what-abouters' who will pop up and defend the propagation of violent interpretations of Shia ideology.
If you would like to contradict this fact, you could probably start by naming the US forces that Christian theology using torture, bombings, and creation of fundamentalist Christian terror groups. Until then, Iran is the largest exporter of religiously inspired violence, bar none.
>There is no other country in the world that has been as deeply committed at all levels of government to fomenting sectarian violence throughout the world for nearly as long
The USA is just as guilty of this as any other nation. You're just not as willing to see it, since it doesn't fit your anti-Islam, pro-Christian narrative.
I don't even see how an "anti-Islam, pro-Christian" bias justifies the mistake here; the US government is, historically pretty high on the list of nations fomenting specifically Islamic sectarian violence.
The motivation for doing so may be geopolitical rather than religious on the part of decisionmakers, but then, that's hardly unique among nations fomenting sectarian violence, Islamic or otherwise.
It is far more religiously-motivated than you seem to care to admit. There are very, very few atheists in Congress calling for the bombing of Iran, and far, far more Christians who seem to be utterly okay with demolishing the Middle East in order to bring about Armageddon. Is that not clear to you, at this point?
All I'm saying is a bias against Islam in considering sectarian violence and its sources shouldn't be sufficient to blind oneself to the US role in fomenting sectarian violence, given that the US role has been particularly prominent in directly fomenting Islamic sectarian violence, both directly and through proxies.
> There are very, very few atheists in Congress calling for the bombing of Iran,
There are very, very few open atheists in Congress, whether or not they are calling for the bombing of Iran.
The last I checked I was an atheist, so I'm not sure how I'm pushing a Christian narrative. Furthermore, you mean my anti-Shia narrative, since nothing I've indicated so far has anything to do with Sunni's, seeing as Iran is a Shia nation. If anything, my claims lend credence to Sunni victimhood, but while I am very sympathetic to the Sunnis caught between ISIL on one side and scared of a Shia government in the other, I think Sunni Wahhabism has much to answer for.
But the difference in current geopolitics is that KSA is more fearful of, and has more to lose from ISIL than any other middle eastern country while Iran greatly benefits from the spread of their religious extremism. ISIL would greatly like to supplant KSA as the keeper of Mecca, Medina, and the Qabaa, while extremist Shia groups look to the Ayatollah as their spiritual leader. Can you see the distinction there?
Furthermore, I think your assertions overstate the actual history. Nixons alliance with the Saudis didn't ease any fears of sectarianism, but again the Saudi theocratic rentier government has been trying to tamp down on extremism since their legitimacy was threatened in 1979. The deposing of the Shah wasn't intended to stoke religious extremism, but it did and that is our legacy. The Neocons flirted with fomenting sectarian violence against the USSR in supporting the mujahideen, especially with logistical support and surface-to-air missiles. The Bush administration helped Iran inadvertently through beaurucratic incompetence and replacing a secular leader with a Shia dominated government who informally looks to Iran as its ally. But you also have to acknowledge that the removal of a secular dictator in favor of a Shia government has done more to balance the scales of power in favor of the Shia and lessened the power of our Saudi (Sunni) allies. This has a net effect of leveling the playing field between the two sides - while increasing the paranoia of Sunnis, it also gives the Iranians greater leverage in the region (giving them a greater stick in which to force Saudi cooperation). The Obama administration has flirted in small scales with supporting Syrian Sunni fighters and has prolonged the conflict by refusing to negotiate with Assad. The US has played an outsized role in the Middle East and must answer for it.
But again, these pale in comparison to the level of _sustained_ investment the Iranian government has made over the past 30+ years. We're not talking about a series of one-off realpolitik maneuvers. Iran is universally recognized as the most skilled operator in the region for good reason - no other country has operated in these areas for as long, or understands the culture or motivations as well. No other country is coordinating bombings in South America, and no other is trying to cultivate fundamentalist extremism there.
Lastly, I'd duspute the idea that I'm biased against Iran. I think the Persian people are probably the most amenable to western values out of any in the region, and current geopolitics notwithstanding they are probably the best hope for America to secure a long term peace in the region. I hope the moderate factions continue to achieve more successes as they have done with the nuclear accords, and there may even be a chance to end the heartbreaking tragedy in Syria by acknowledging their regional influence.
But I feel compelled to tell the truth as I see it, and to me that is acknowledging the fact that Iran is currently the worlds leading cultivator of fundamentalist terror. That doesn't mean I conflate the Ayatollah with the Persian people, that means the government of Iran is the central coordinator of Shia extremism throughout the world today, their spiritual leader. As with any government there are factions, but Irans hardliners came to power in the revolution and maintain power to this day. If moderates succeed in gaining more ground the region will be much safer overall.
Lastly, you again dodged my point. America is not cultivating Christian terror groups that look to Obama as their spiritual leader.
You are correct and this comments section (and it modding) demonstrates a fantastically shallow understanding of the Middle East that is easily addressed by airport bookstores.
Surely some of you know someone who has served in the US armed forces in the Middle East. Ask them who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are...
Not that our military aren't intelligent and capable of cultivating their own opinions, but their training and ongoing survival in the arena of combat depends on identification of people as the enemy as 'will they put a bullet in you?' rather than the 'righteousness' of their beliefs or ideology.
It's less of 'will they put a bullet in you' and more of 'Iran is the worlds greatest expert in the development and use of IEDs explicitly designed to maim and murder American forces, as in they have engineering staff embedded with insurgent groups teaching new ways of piercing American armored personnel carriers.'
That wasn't a literalism. Of course I'm aware of the use of IEDs as a contrast to the traditional firefight.
But saying that forces on the ground are the best and most objective at assessing who is in the right and the wrong in these conflicts, who is 'good' and 'bad' is simply farcical, because all of the indoctrination and (indeed necessary) biases ("identify this person/group as bad, as they are a direct threat to my life, even though their overarching motivations may be the most noble") warp their perspective.
I can understand the notion that there is enough fault to go around, and that every group is incentivized to see the fault in every other group.
But my point is that Iran is unique in that it foments religious terrorism as matter of state policy unmatched in the world. Quds forces aren't exploiting religious people for their ends, they are true believers who are actively trying to bring their Islamist revolution to the rest of the world in a systematic and patient way.
A subjective and clearheaded analysis of available facts must lead to the conclusion that it's a literal terrorist state, and I think the poster you responded to is trying to dispel the false equivalency and 'what-aboutism' so prevalent in this thread and Chomsky-ist worldviews.
In my travels to Europe post-2001 it became pretty clear to me that the citizens there could separate the American citizen from the American government.
They knew, as they did before 9/11, that the American people were generally peaceful and generous, which was in direct contradiction to the actions of the US Government.
And yet, look what kind of candidate is still in the race to become president. The American government is voted into office. At least parts of the American people are also partially responsible. I am not saying, they could have known entirely, but the US is involved in the Middle East making it worse and worse since the early nineties, well before 9/11.
Edit: Actually since after WW2, but the Iraq wars started in the nineties.
>> but the US is involved in the Middle East making it worse and worse since the early nineties, well before 9/11.
I think we've found out people want freedom in the Middle East, they just don't want to have to fight to keep it anymore. We gave Iraq freedom and look what happened. We toppled several dictators in the Middle East and what happened? It created a power vacuum and ISIS stepped into the fold and look what they're doing. The pseudo democratic governments we set up were rotten to the core. How soon we forgot that here religion and family ties means nothing to the people voting. There, your family and religious views dictate everything you do - it turned into a huge dumpster fire because of our nativity in thinking all we have to do is give you this incredibly powerful thing (freedom) and you'll be fine keeping and protecting it.
Even in this country we had a fairly long revolution and a very nasty civil war in order to get where we are today - something these countries are now having to go through and endure the pain and misery of doing so. I won't touch on how having several global super powers running proxy wars between these countries involved in civil war isn't help them figure it out at all either.
I think the problem is not what America and the West has done here, but that it will not stop repeating the same mistake over and over.
People in the West are not rational either, they vote based on enemy stereotypes, too. Socialism, islam, China, immigrants are some of them, "socialism" probably being the most abstract and religion-like one.
Properly done opinion polls represent the American voters, for example this one [0] which states that 41% of American voters think that it would be a good idea to elect Trump. That is more than a tiny minority.
It's hard to base anything off opinion polls like that. They don't ask "Who, at of all eligible men and women in the US, should be elected?" They ask, "Who, of these <small set> candidates do you support?" Someone can support Trump if only because they don't support Hillary (fuck, the reverse is probably half her vote).
In every representative democracy you elect the lesser evil. That is part of the point of democracy, you compromise with everybody else. In my opinion "not bombing people", "not building a wall around the country" and similar stuff should be pretty high on everybody's wishlist for a new president. Apparently in America 41% of the voting population has a very different wishlist and/or is ignorant to or does not know the things candidates actually say.
I get that Americas election system is broken and I also get that "not Clinton" or for some people "not a woman" is on their wishlist. It just puzzles me that America, the country of "the [letter]-word", does not have a blacklist of phrases a candidate simply cannot say engrained deep enough into society.
This has nothing to do with democracy. This is what you get when you have a majority based voting system with centralized power structure. Democracy in its origin was about the separation of powers and the involvment of citizens in governance.
I intentionally said representative democracy. I personally think it is a good model. Council and referendum based democracies have been tried, I think as the main model, they do not work. And even with them, compromising is the point of the Western democracy, its definition almost always includes human rights and protection of minorities.
It's a bit incomplete to act incredulous about the existence of one specific candidate while ignoring how terrible the other mainstream option is as well.
While each of us will have our personal alarms set off harder for one or the other, please work to avoid transmuting this arbitrary difference into actual support for either of the bags of shit.
Have you listened to Trump? He has stated, in as many words, that we should go into Iraq and "take the oil". He's advocated our involvement in other issues. He's repeatedly suggested the use of nuclear weapons to deal with current conflicts.
How is this not a textbook example of "overseas aggressiveness that ... angers other nations"?
Primaries get about 50% turnout per party. And "we don't care to use our power to decide who are leaders are" isn't much of a moral defense against what those leaders do.
The U.S. Government is crazy generous. As a European I live in zero fear of being invaded by any other country. We receive huge military subsidies in the form of NATO protections.
They knew, as they did before 9/11, that the American people were generally peaceful and generous
The American people strike me as incredibly schizophrenic overall because half seem to be, as you say, generally peaceful and generous, whereas as the other half seem dangerously self-serving and gung-ho aggressive in their views of the rest of the world, the poor, women, foreigners, science etc.
It's this half that tends to support the US governments destructive foreign policies.
Alas, people are responsible for their governments. You can't have all the rights of citizenships without any of the responsibility. I would say (having lived in both regions) that 'most people in Europe' wish that Americans would take a lot more responsibility for the crimes of their state than they currently do ..
Quite a lot of this goodwill went away after GWB was re-elected. We all thought you made a childish mistake at first (do the downvoters of this comment even remember that campaign? perhaps they were in kindergarten), but the second time.. that was what burned bridges.
There were many people who voted for Bush II the first time, believing his marketing of no "nation building" etc, and were then completely appalled at what he proceeded to do. Unfortunately, the number of blind war-cheerleaders was far greater - tell people they're under attack, and they fall into line. Furthermore, it's not as if with the other party now in power, USG has actually stopped attacking other countries.
I think another thing other nationalities (especially Europeans) need [0] to understand is that USians view the necessity of government differently. I believe you see the Democrats as being the reasonable bunch because their rhetoric is more compatible with what you generally expect from politicians. Whereas the Republicans' rhetoric is mainly opposed to the Democrats' version of "progress" rather than proposals of their own top-down solution. So you end up seeing it as progress vs anti-progress, while domestically we do not implicitly assume government structure is even needed.
(This is certainly not an endorsement of either party's actual actions after they take office, but only analysis of how their marketing is perceived)
Bush did more for Africa than any other world leader in history. There isn't a close second to that. The aid went far beyond just food as well:
"When the Bush administration inaugurated the program [PEPFAR] in 2003, fewer than 50,000 HIV-infected people on the African continent were receiving the antiretroviral drugs that keep the virus in check and halt the progression toward full-blown AIDS. By the time Bush left office, the number had increased to nearly 2 million. Today, the United States is directly supporting antiretroviral treatment for more than 4 million men, women and children worldwide, primarily in Africa."
Iran is also far better on Human rights than say Saudi Arabia, that the media, important political figures and companies [0] consistently tie 'enemy' and 'ally' labels is such a complete farce.
If Israel would stop physically attacking Palestinians, and stop running an apartheid state, this complaint would have some merit.
Measuring every Middle Eastern geo-political question as "But how will this help Israel" is both short-sighted, and will lead you to support gross violations of human rights.
Well let's see... do you mean giving them Judea and Samaria (ancient Jewish land now dubbed 'the West Bank'?) That sounds like a great deal to me, to be honest.
EDIT: if you are downvoting this, please explain where I'm wrong in a reply - let's have a discussion.
And regularly turning off power and fresh water to the entire territory, a territory that is surrounded by barbed wire and tanks? Regularly denying these people the right to travel, within their community or internationally, for no other reason other than arbitrary action or reaction?
Forgive many people for not finding that as great a deal as you seem to believe it.
Whether you like it or not, Israel has the right to defend itself.
When you live next to a chunk of land controlled by a terrorist group that wants nothing but your destruction, fires rockets from hospitals and has no concept of the value of human life, you do everything you can to protect your population.
You would do the same - and, in fact, your country does the same. It's only because Israel is a Jewish, pariah state that you bring this defensive act as if it was some sort of apartheid-like offense. You care not one iota for the same situation existing in other countries, nor do you compare likes to likes.
Every single country in the world does this - they protect their borders and they protect their people.
Blaming Israel for being a country is hateful and insane.
EDIT: And let's not forget that there's Egypt on the other side of Gaza. They do not count, do they? Or are they also an apartheid state?
Let us be clear, here. I don't "hate Israel". I have a substantial disagreement with the actions of the current Israeli leadership, which in many ways I find repugnant and inhumane, as I do with the terrorist elements within Palestine, whose actions are also repugnant and inhumane.
Incidentally, even among Jews, my view point is not alone and many have expressed disdain for the extreme policies of the current government.
There is a hardline element in some of the Arab populace who takes a violent approach to Judaism (indeed, many other religions too) - this is regrettable at best, and unlikely to ever be removed.
One of Israel's biggest misgivings (and it's one of the US's) too is a failure to see how it's actions (or reactions) might contribute to the culture in Palestine, the rise of Hezbollah. Undoubtedly many in Palestine -would- love to live their lives freely, peacefully alongside Israel. But Israel's steadfast refusal to see how its approach to "solving" the problem makes enemies of those who might not otherwise support such an organization, but feel helpless. They are the civilians between two warring armies, no different to villagers in Colombia dealing with being between the various guerrilla groups, armies and narcos.
In fact you are guilty of it, too - turning power off to a country for two days because of a rocket attack is not in any way a defensive act. It does not limit the ability of Hezbollah to launch more rocket attacks, but it does limit the ability of the citizens of Palestine to live their lives.
My hope, and my belief is that there -is- a middle ground, that moderates on both sides (be that religious, political, sides of the wall) can and would like to live happily together and that that is achievable.
But it DOES require a change in strategy and tactics in order to succeed. By BOTH sides.
> There is a hardline element in some of the Arab populace who takes a violent approach to Judaism (indeed, many other religions too) - this is regrettable at best, and unlikely to ever be removed.
Hence why Israel needs to exist, and why it needs to be able to defend itself.
You are apparently unable to see your own thought to the end: if Israel stops defending itself as you suggest, its people will be massacred.
They live next to this chunk of land, because Israel took it at gunpoint. They had no right to do so, and they had no right to displace its occupants. In its current form, Israel has no right to exist, much less defend itself. It is an occupying power - morally, it is not much different from the Third Reich rolling into Warsaw, and corralling its Jewish residents into walled ghettos.
There are other forms in which it would, but the current one is not one of them. It must either end the occupation, or emancipate.
It is absolutely an apartheid offensive [1]. Palestinians have no freedom of movement in their own land. They are living in the world's largest internment camp.
Your statements show staggering ignorance - and your map is deceptive and false.
A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into exile by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, the Jews suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. No matter how far they were scattered, they never gave up their rights or desire to return.
By the early 19th century—years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement—more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel. The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.
When many Jewish people returned to Israel in 1800s it was dry and barren. Today more than half of Israel is still desert. But Israelis are finding unique ways to make the desert bloom and prosper. “We are not the first but maybe one of the first nations ever who really found the way to cultivate the desert and make it bloom,” said Alon Badihi, executive director of the Jewish National Fund. JNF has developed and forested the land of Israel for more than 100 years.
The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestinato Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name.
The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. No one seems to remember that simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel's desire to leave the West Bank too and thus achieve an amicable two-state solution.
And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them – an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then, instead of building a state with its attendant political and economic institutions, they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.
Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
To me it's pretty obvious the Jews just want to live in peace and have made concessions for years to do so, but Hamas wants nothing but an endless war. It's kind of hard to make peace, when the only thing your opponent is interested in is your total elimination.
Like the Israeli prime minister said:
"'Here's the difference between us," explains the Israeli prime minister. 'We're using missile defense to protect our civilians and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.""
>"'Here's the difference between us," explains the Israeli prime minister. 'We're using missile defense to protect our civilians and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles.""
the former is perhaps more tenable when one doesn't live in the world's largest and densest open-air prison
>the former is perhaps more tenable when one doesn't live in the world's largest and densest open-air prison
The open air prison is more of a reaction to an already bad situation.
Hamas doesn't want a 2 state solution, actually no Palestinian faction wants a 2 state solution.
The PA wants a Palestinian state clear of all Jews, not Israelis but Jews.
And another state where all of the Palestinian refugees which were not allowed to gain refugee status by the Arab League (hence UNRWA and not the UNHCR) would have the right of return.
Effectively the 2 state solution as it's currently envisioned would mean either a true Aparthide state or no more Jewish state.
You can call Gaza an open air prison, but you also need to remember that about 100,000 rockets and mortars have been fired from it at the Israeli civilian population.
When Egypt and Jordan controlled Gaza and the WB the Palestinian liberation agenda was focused on the territory Israel controlled, now it's shifted towards the territory that have been lost to Israel but by all accounts the end goal has never changed.
Blaming Israel for this entire situation is satirical, they are too blame but their core offense is their existence not any specific action or policy.
If there to be peace it needs to start with normalization of relations, the Palestinians in Jordan and Lebanon have to be given rights under the UN charter for refugees and assimilated, after 10 years of quiet it would be considerably easier to come to an agreement.
However there will be no quite the 2nd intifada started because there was a good chance for peace, 150,000 Palestinians worked in Israel, Israelies conducted business daily in the PA territories, and the Palestinian economy was one of the fastest growing in the world.
This was good for the Palestinians but pretty bad for their leaders like Yaaser Arafat who wasn't even a Palestinian her was an Egytpian of Libyan decent born before Israel has even existed and never set food in Palestine or Israel before 1947.
So Arafat blew the camp David accords in which he was offered more than he was actually expecting and even demanding including Jerusalem to be put on the table and kicked off the entire mess.
For all his flaws Abbas is the first Palestinian leader who was actually born in Palestine.
But for the most part history will remember him as one with Arafat, especially after he said no to even a better offer than the original Camp David one.
If your cities are regularly bombed to rumble, civilians targeted, and territory annexed year after year, and economically you are not allowed to develop, with embargoes, interference and such, then you'll be probably more busy building "underground tunnels" to ensure your being alive and fighting than "roads and rail". Talk about blaming the victim.
Also amazing how an era which saw Palestinian casualties to 30 to 1 over Israelis is presenting the latter as peacemakers whose offers were refused.
This part is telling though (the ruler part), even though it lives tons of specifics out: "And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them – an independent territory?".
It's still more complicated than that. Israel still deploys settlers in Palestinian territory, as a land grab and as human shields. And I stale government has factions explicitly in favor of territorial expansion.
> Well, if Israel also stops claiming its surrounding land.
What land belonging to Iran does Israel occupy ? care to explain ? does that justify calls for the extermination of Israel and the Jews ? does that justify holocaust denial ?
I explain it the same way I explain the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq: a complete farce perpetrated by the government on its people. It's also the same way I will explain the election of Trump to children.
In 2011, this belief persisted, with 38% believing that "the US has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda" and 21% believing Iraq gave support to Al Qaeda: http://themoderatevoice.com/ten-years-later-belief-in-iraq-c...
The 1953 coup [1] probably has something to do with that, followed by the hostage crisis in 1979 [2], and the downing of an Iranian passenger airplane by the US [3].
The coup was an American failure caused by meddling into other people's affairs. This is not the first time nor Iran is the only nation where Americans have tried that.
Iran-USA relationship seems complete irrational to me. It is as if the establishment in Washington and Tehran have some sort of gain from keeping things as bad as they are.
Japan killed thousands of Americans so did Germany and China. USA has been humiliated pretty often by many other countries but USA has (correctly) not held the kind of grudge it has against Iran.
> “Last week, for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution, there were no chants of ‘death to America’ at weekly Friday prayers around the country[…]
Wow. The folks who think "bad things should happen to those people in the US" take a break from saying that when bad things happen? This is less of a "nice story" -- more like "Y'know, we shouldn't say 'Death to America' this week because as much as we seem to enjoy the results, we don't want to get the blame."
Please. At the time of the US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11, it wasn't even a nation state in the modern sense, it was a crater that was periodically claimed by one faction or another. The US entry was as strategically useful to as many of these factions as it was harmful. The enthusiastic support from numerous factions for American intervention is well documented.
Likewise the same can be said for half of the states in the region, you can list the factions just waiting for the US Marines to come in and do their dirty work for them, and sometimes these factions include AQ. Look at Libya...we "liberated" it much to the enthusiastic applause and support of the same people we tried to bomb to perdition after 9/11.
We're in danger of the same mistake in Syria...the world can't abide the Assad regime, yet the rebels draw support from Islamists that are hostile to US interests.
We're not the good guys, but there are also no good guys.
The US didn't kill a million people in Iraq, nor 50,000 people in Afghanistan, nor 80,000 Pakistanis. You're talking about civil war, and your figures are wrong to begin with.
The US didn't force the numerous factions of Iraq to go to war with each other for a decade. In fact the US lost hundreds of billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, trying to stop them from killing each other. The point should be made again: the most powerful military on the planet spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and suffered tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, directly trying to keep Iraqis from killing each other in civil war - to no avail. The US also wasn't responsible for carving up the region and compiling the nation of Iraq from factions that dislike each other - an inevitable time bomb sooner than later.
You might as well claim that the British killed a million Iraqis because of their very long history there and involvement in the Iraq war and occupation; that's just as incorrect and irrational of a statement.
The Arabs had great/ancient civilizations too. The whole region is rife with rich history.
Anyway, lots of people get offended if you confuse their ethnicity ( eg: korean <=> japanese, china <=> japanese, indian <=> pakistani, thai <=> cambodian ...) Doesn't mean it's rational. Doesn't mean you have license to denigrate either of the groups.
I disagree, the history of Saudi Arabia is `limited` compared to Persia. And certainly reflects on the culture of the region. While Iranian's can choose moderate parts of their history, with different interpretations of Islam, to be Saudi is come from a conservative Wahhabi mentality.
I don't think "camel herders" was meant to be taken any more seriously than "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".
One generally ribs one's regional neighbours. There are obvious exceptions, but I wouldn't necessarily assume it was meant with the tone you seem to be attributing to it.
Sure, it's possible. After all, it's easy to misunderstand an online comment.
However, parent did say that persians had a great and ancient civilization and don't like to be compared to camel herders. And calling arabs camel herders is an actual insult, so "frogs" vs "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".
I considered the ribbing angle, but looking at the parent's account he doesn't look persian or arabic.
Regardless, since the comment was flagged, the point is moot.
It's probably for the best, since the parent has his real identity tied to the comment/account. To that end, I'll happily delete my comments if he wants to delete his :)
I'm not associated with that region in any way, but I'm struggling to find a way in which calling someone a camel-herder isn't designed to be an ethnic slur.
The English call the Welsh "sheep shaggers". That's an ethnic slur. It only serves to illustrate my point. Just because it's an ethnic slur doesn't mean it's meant (or should be interpreted) as something hostile.
> The Arabs had great/ancient civilizations too. The whole region is rife with rich history.
Though a lot of the other people surrounding Arabia (Persians, Byzantines in Syria) had great civilizations the Arabs themselves didn't have a much of a civilization. Most of the Islamic civilization comes from Persia after the fall of the Sassanid empire.
>Though a lot of the other people surrounding Arabia (Persians, Byzantines in Syria) had great civilizations the Arabs themselves didn't have a much of a civilization. Most of the Islamic civilization comes from Persia after the fall of the Sassanid empire.
What about the various caliphates? There is also Babylon, though I'm not sure when the people there were first considered arabs.
To be clear, I didn't mean to call you a racist: just that that particular comment had a flavor of racism.
Deeming a group of people as just generally superior/inferior to another based country/continent of origin smells pretty racist.
Maybe a more correct term would be cultural racism? It's your prerogative as to how you explain it to yourself, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...
What ? KSA is hardly US government's enemy, on the contrary. KSA is US biggest ally in the middle east after Israel. KSA is not on the list of terrorist states in US and Saudi princes enjoy a wide access to politicians like the Bush family or the Clinton family which they actively finance. But it is interesting one would ever think it isn't the case.
TL;DNR: A stable oil market motivates everything. The KSA is a means to an end.
I think the real question is about the realpoltik of the American alliance with the House of Saud, versus Saudi Arabia as a whole. Lest we forget, 15 of the 19 were Saudis. Lest we forget, Saudi has the reputation of funding ultraconservative and politically reactionary movements around the world, that aren't exactly considered aligned with American political policies and values.
But that doesn't answer the questions about why the KSA is not listed as a terrorist financier and why the Saudi royal family enjoy easy access to the US government.
The first one is simple. If the US called it a terrorist financier, it would probably fatally damage the alliance. So what does the alliance give? Well, for the KSA it's a security guarantee. The US guarantees the acidity of the kingdom, and the Saudi family in particular against Iran. Also, the US gives political cover for maintaining a sphere of influence over the Arab world.
So what does the US get out of it? Well, two things. The primary goal is a stable supply of oil to the global market. (It's not about actual barrels of oil, but rather the global price of oil.)
Maintaining a reasonable supply of cheap oil is one of the two axes that all US Middle Eastern policy revolves. (The other is security for Israel.) The reason why oil is important is self-evident in a society reliant on petroleum products.
We should always remember that the initial reason why the US decided they had a national interest in Saudi Arabia was with the foundation of ARAMCO, which was originally known as California-Arabian Standard Oil.
So what's wrong with Iran? Iran? Well nothing at first. Iran, like Saudi Arabia was a an irrelevant backwater of international relations until the discovery of oil. After that, the Cold War intervened.
Well, the US pretty much poisoned the relationship with Iran when the CIA overthrew the democratic government and installed the autocratic Shaw, In an effort to stymie Soviet interests. When Kohmehni overthrew the Shaw, he lined up with the Soviets to put a needle in the Americans' eye. In response, the Americans strengthened the military relationship with KSA to counter Soviet influence in the region.
No Saudi citizen I know hates America, heck they've embraced the American culture with awe and are the 4th largest student population in the US. American Fast food, American cars, etc are cherished and many American companies have flourished because of their establishments in Saudi Arabia.
Assumptions are harmful. Iranians on the other hand have a genuine reason to hate the US. Iran funds Hezbollah which have attached American interests in the past. It was Iranian-aligned militia that wrecked the American army in many battles in Iraq.
I don't think that was what was meant, rather it was "exceptional" given the past relationship of the two nations. Also, is the only other option of not mourning to celebrate?
That's nice and all, but I vividly remember people dancing in the streets of Iran celebrating the attack. I will never have that image removed from my mind.
While I'm sure there are people who were upset at the attacks, there was a sizeable chunk of people who weren't. They were in fact happy. Enough to form crowds dancing in the streets holding signs and chanting. I'm old enough to remember that stuff pretty vividly (I was 22 years old on 9/11) so historical revisionism isn't going to work on me...
You have no idea what you saw -- clips like that are often propaganda or just crap. Big news sites like Drudge would post fringe nonsense for cheap hits.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the NY Times was running stories about babies being tossed from incubators directly lifted from WWI accounts of the Hun.
I was working in a network operations center at the time, listening to radio and seeing CNN 18 hours a day for weeks post 9/11. There were all sorts of bullshit stories, from foiled plots against facilities to whatever else that made it broadcast. People were jumpy and craving information.
Listen up kid, (I'm calling you kid because you're acting like one; telling me "I don't know what I saw". Who the hell do you think you are?) I'm not some naive nobody who was being swayed by paranoia, the media or anything else. I'm also not going to fall for any 9/11 conspiracy nuttery.
I looked up what I saw and you can see the videos yourself, right now, with a quick google search.
> I was working in a network operations center at the time
I simply don't believe you. I don't believe you are over the age of 25 in fact. More importantly, everyone was glued to their TV back then. And yes, there was this thing called "the internet" back then too, where people could validate and check information. They could also get their news from sources outside the U.S. Many of us were doing just that.
I doubt you'll ever see anything like that again.
That enormous stockpile of goodwill, like the US budget surplus, was uselessly frittered away within years and everyone was back to hating America again.
If there's another attack of this magnitude I think the whole world will be so afraid of what America will do in retaliation that they won't have any strength left for empathy.