Silence in Syria, Panic in Iran

[sexual_chocolate]

next, edit for poor communication of meaning and intent (yes i know, a bit subjective; mebbe you're writing a nice poem a la virendra7, and i'm dissing your artistry. if this is the case, my apologies, and perhaps you could parse it for me....).

 

Ok. I've got five minutes...

 

Basically, your point about the overthrow of Mossadegh, and the overthrow of the MRS in 1979, portrays US foreign policy as something that is implemented seperately from domestic politics. I don't believe that. I think that US foreign policy is implicitly tied to domestic policy agendas.

 

Eisenhower came into power, and trusted his British friends significantly more than Mossadegh. Ike thought Mossadegh was a wet handed thief. Mossadegh was, as I'm sure you know, rather ill at the time, and thought that he had lost his best hope of retaining the friendship of the Americans. Sure enough...

 

And of course, Carter's election and his implementation of the human rights based foreign policy had a drastic and immediate effect on SAVAK and people seeking change within Iran. Reagan sought out the extreme islamofascists in his negotiations to secretly resolve the hostage crisis...again US domestic politics played trump over our foreign interests.

 

While I probably agree with your conclusions, I prefer a significantly higher level of granularity and knowledge in my prognostication. Of course, black swan type events continue to happen, but it does make the conversation with my taxi drivers in Tabriz significantly more interesting.

 

Finally, I believe, but am not sure, the one of Speaker Pelosi's oldest and best contributors has been lobbying for the armenian genocide bill.

 

it's dinner time, have fun...

 

I'm not quite sure how statements that i considered to be rather innocuous and event-based were construed as an indication of my belief in a domestic/foreign policy split?

 

As for granularity, there are contextual contingencies with every situation; hell, even hitler still has his supporters and apologists, and, from their point of view, he acted in a noble and heroic way.

There is no "granularity" that needs to be added to my understanding of modern Iranian history for me to continue to be sickened by the actions of both the british and the americans, since there is no ethical justification for these actions (although I appreciate any factual information).

 

and who might this contributor be, and what might your position regarding the genocide bill be? and what do you see as the drivers of this bill?

[JayB]

The nausea doesn't extent to the actions taken and actions established by Mullahs in charge of Iran since 1979? Interesting.

 

Had they established a state where all of the rights and freedoms that leftists of a certain stripe - not those who spent the interval between 1917 and 1989 apologizing for the various marxo-totalitarianisms that blighted the globe during that era - used to consider desirable, this might be understandable. Establishing Persian Netherlands out of the ashes of the Shah's dictatorship...yes, I can see why one might applaud that. Establishing an Islamist petro-theocracy where the repression, constraints on personal freedoms, the liquidation of opponents of the regime, etc rival those enforced by the Shah, at the very least - why one might applaud that, or defend it, or proclaim that it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs is more difficult to comprehend.

 

Do you really believe that there was no secular opposition to the Shah? Ever wonder what may have happened to them and everything that they represented after Khomeni took over? Can all that transpired before and after the Revolution that brought the mullahs to power in Iran be laid at the feet of agents outside of Islam and Iran? That actors within Iran had no inspirations, motives, or interests other than those that formed as a direct reaction against Western patronage of the Shah?

 

 

[whirlwind]

maybe maybe not,

 

 

im tired, in more ways than one. g-night

Edited October 17, 2007 by wirlwind

[Fairweather]

god this stuff makes my head hurt. and its said that there are people here that think going to war with iran/iraq/siria and or any other nation at this point in time is actually justifyable.

those people need their heads checked, and or need to stop beliveing everything there told by a very biased media. weither it be liberal, or republican, only maybe 10% of the bullshit is true, the rest is tainted with someform of biased or misinformation. kinda reminds me of WW2, my grandma was in belin and to this day is to some degree reluctant to agree that germany was responsible for some of the things it did, and its not because she is stupid or fails to see what really happen its just the fack that what they were told and how they were told it, she didnt actually see any death camps, how would she have ever known they even existed? do you think hilter would just tell all the germans, that he threw jews to death camps, as far as she knew they were taken out of the country, not killed.

what if arabs are in a way US's "Jew problem", in which case would you condone a war to exerminate them knowing that they in fact were mearly scapgoats to a crazy dictators pursuit of a "Better World". im not saying that this is the case for sure but how do we know the blankets not over our eyes right now?

 

Huh???? That is among the most convoluted, uninformed, revisionist rants I've read in a while - and you're in good company here. I would rate it a blend somewhere between Virendra7 and Dave Schultz.

 

BTW: Your grandma probably knew...or at least suspected.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,439168,00.html

[whirlwind]

so how do you think they'll start desensitizeing us? And when, if they havn't already?

[whirlwind]

""It is certainly true that most Germans 'did not know' about National Socialist crimes of violence; nothing precise, that is, because they did not ask any questions_." A common explanation among influential modern German historians, including Hans-Ulrich Thamer in his study Wooing and Violence (1986) is that the Nazis "seduced" an unwilling or passive public.""

 

from your artical, and the point i was trying to make, which i guess came out contrived and .. well what ever.

 

[joblo7]

america

 

conquering the world,

our hitlerian dream.

no wisdom-light

no vision-bright

no oneness-dream.

all pride,

all fright,

we are failing

god's blue-hope-dream.

 

 

[sexual_chocolate]

 

 

The nausea doesn't extent to the actions taken and actions established by Mullahs in charge of Iran since 1979? Interesting.

 

You ask a question that you think you already know the answer to? Interesting.

 

I'll correct you: I find the type of violence authorized and condoned and directed by the mullahs in iran to be nauseating. simple, really.

 

Had they established a state where all of the rights and freedoms that leftists of a certain stripe - not those who spent the interval between 1917 and 1989 apologizing for the various marxo-totalitarianisms that blighted the globe during that era - used to consider desirable, this might be understandable. Establishing Persian Netherlands out of the ashes of the Shah's dictatorship...yes, I can see why one might applaud that. Establishing an Islamist petro-theocracy where the repression, constraints on personal freedoms, the liquidation of opponents of the regime, etc rival those enforced by the Shah, at the very least - why one might applaud that, or defend it, or proclaim that it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs is more difficult to comprehend.

 

First of all, it is open to debate whether or not the violence in iran has ever approached the violence of the shah's years; from what i've gathered, it has not, not even close, but this is really beside the point.

 

Tell me who "applauds" the iranian theocracy?

 

Tell me who "defends" it?

 

Tell me who states that "it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs"?

 

Who is this chap that you refer to? I'd be interested in hearing how he might make these rather, in my mind, unsupportable posits (although each point offers an occasion for serious inquiry). maybe he's got a way of presenting things that makes sense? I don't know, I haven't met him.

 

Do you really believe that there was no secular opposition to the Shah? Ever wonder what may have happened to them and everything that they represented after Khomeni took over? Can all that transpired before and after the Revolution that brought the mullahs to power in Iran be laid at the feet of agents outside of Islam and Iran? That actors within Iran had no inspirations, motives, or interests other than those that formed as a direct reaction against Western patronage of the Shah?

 

It seems there most certainly was secular opposition to the shah.

And after the revolution, i would imagine that many found themselves to be in serious straights. Your point?

 

Answer to penultimate question:

 

interesting question. would the overthrow of mossadegh have happened without intervention? If the overthrow had not happened, how would the politics of the region have evolved? We see how the politics DID evolve, in no small part due to western meddling. maybe mossadegh would have turned into an unpopular autocrat himself, fomenting the conditions for another revolution. etc etc. So, can ALL that transpired be laid at western feet? sheesh, depends on your aperture setting. i would say some things can, some things can't, and many things one can't say whence or whither they arose.

 

answer to last question: irrelevant.

[sexual_chocolate]

god this stuff makes my head hurt. and its said that there are people here that think going to war with iran/iraq/siria and or any other nation at this point in time is actually justifyable.

those people need their heads checked, and or need to stop beliveing everything there told by a very biased media. weither it be liberal, or republican, only maybe 10% of the bullshit is true, the rest is tainted with someform of biased or misinformation. kinda reminds me of WW2, my grandma was in belin and to this day is to some degree reluctant to agree that germany was responsible for some of the things it did, and its not because she is stupid or fails to see what really happen its just the fack that what they were told and how they were told it, she didnt actually see any death camps, how would she have ever known they even existed? do you think hilter would just tell all the germans, that he threw jews to death camps, as far as she knew they were taken out of the country, not killed.

what if arabs are in a way US's "Jew problem", in which case would you condone a war to exerminate them knowing that they in fact were mearly scapgoats to a crazy dictators pursuit of a "Better World". im not saying that this is the case for sure but how do we know the blankets not over our eyes right now?

 

Huh???? That is among the most convoluted, uninformed, revisionist rants I've read in a while - and you're in good company here. I would rate it a blend somewhere between Virendra7 and Dave Schultz.

 

How so?

[JosephH]

Tell me who states that "it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs"?

 

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces.

 

The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America.

 

The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats.

 

Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!"

 

Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin.

 

Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world.

[Serenity]

It's a good debate, but numbing all the same. We could win without a shot being fired.

 

We could all just start pressuring the oil lobbyist/politicians to make home grown bio-fuels our MAIN NATIONAL PRIORITY. This way we can cut out the middle east altogether, and we'll never have to deal with any of them again.

 

I'd go out and buy a car that runs on corn. Just let me buy my 50,000 acres of cornfields first (and fortify them).

[kevbone]

It's a good debate, but numbing all the same. We could win without a shot being fired.

 

We could all just start pressuring the oil lobbyist/politicians to make home grown bio-fuels our MAIN NATIONAL PRIORITY. This way we can cut out the middle east altogether, and we'll never have to deal with any of them again.

 

I'd go out and buy a car that runs on corn. Just let me buy my 50,000 acres of cornfields first (and fortify them).

 

 

Well said....all of it....

 

 

 

But then Bush and his cronies would not make as much money. But money is not the underlying problem…….one word sums it all up……

 

 

 

Greed

 

[fear_and_greed]

Tell me who states that "it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs"?

 

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces.

 

The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America.

 

The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats.

 

Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!"

 

Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin.

 

Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world.

 

I nominate this for post of the year.

[JayB]

Tell me who states that "it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs"?

 

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces.

 

The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America.

 

The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats.

 

Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!"

 

Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin.

 

Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world.

 

It'd be interesting to see this model extended to the political dynamics in, say, Egypt. The rise of the Muslim brotherhood, the attempts to assassinate Nasser, the assassination of Sadat - all a response to exogenous forces? There was a long history of democratic rule in the middle east, in which repression was unknown prior to Western meddling, was there?

 

Ditto for Latin America. Land of milk and honey from time immemorial until the US got involved? There are no endogenous forces, mechanisms, ideologies, classes that bear any responsibility for the mire of poverty, corruption, incompetence and failure that's largely prevailed there?

 

 

[Dechristo]

Tell me who states that "it was an inevitable consequence of Western meddling in Iranian affairs"?

 

Me, I have no problem whatsoever say it was an inevitable consequence of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs. I was around countless brown-bag, anti-Shah demonstrations and knew more than a few highly disaffected Iranians in the movement to overthrow the Shah. And most all of these folks had no shortage of personal stories to recount relative to the savage level of violence employed by the Shah's security forces.

 

The bottom line in Iran was we attempted to play them, and the entire region, like they were just another country in Latin America where the real roots of U.S. foreign policy lie. In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America.

 

The essential problem however, is there are no Latin suicide bombers - Latin cultures are nothing like Mid-Eastern cultures and you simply can't operate with the same mindset in Sana'a as you do in Santiago and expect the same results. And that's basically what we've been doing again and again in the Mid-East. The Iran-Contra Affair was the recent pinnacle of this disfunctional thinking. You'd think we'd learn eventually - U.S. Mid-East policy and 'diplomacy' has been like the longest running sitcom ever for the amusement of generations of British diplomats.

 

Hell, even our Latin neighbors are finally "getting" it, even if it took them a 100 years. Chavez, Saddam, the Shah, and Ahmadinejad were/are very much creations of a U.S. foreign policy that has been stuck in a revolving, time-warped turnstile still steam-driven by Rockefeller-era corporate sensibilities. Each decade we reap a hard bite on the ass from seeds sewn in many previous decades and yet each time we cry anew, "It's a outrage! How could this evil be happening to us!"

 

Even more miraculously, a mirror is never at hand when we we attempt to clearly point out where the true evil lies, which is generally at our feet - we need merely look where we're aiming our gun. So, clueless as ever, the beat goes on - and everywhere in Africa and South America, that beat is backing lyrics sung in the language everyone on those two continents is suddenly clamouring to learn - Mandarin.

 

Is it vanity or pride that keeps the American Right steadfastly blind and unable to entertain even the remote possibility that many of the affronts to the United States aren't a reaction to our successes, but rather to our excesses?. And is it stupidity or self-loathing that keeps the American Left from realizing that reactionary cultural responses to U.S. hedgemony are only rarely cuddly and good tourist destinations? And how hard is it to realize some of the basic, common sense approaches so useful for getting along in third grade would go a long way in today's world.

 

Good to see someone has it all figured out.

 

But, I'm sorry to learn that self-interest, power-hunger, and greed are endemic only to those of Euro heritage.

 

It's a pity that so many minds are limited to a narrow focus of pathological racial/cultural self-loathing.

[noliquidity]

I find it facinating when a person takes one side in a debate, someone else responds, and then they are criticized for being too one-sided????WTF.

 

How often do you dissect an issue in a wholistic manner?

 

 

Isn't the point of debate to present both sides and at the end arrive at a more thorough understanding of an issue ?

 

If not, you need to start presenting both "sides".

 

Edited October 17, 2007 by noliquidity

[chucK]

This is a great thread. Very thought provoking. I appreciate all of your hard work.

 

I find it fascinating that whenever someone gets a good thoughtful post in, JayB almost invariably responds with some version of, "Interesting theory. I wonder though how you would explain the events happening on the Moon?"

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Good to see someone has it all figured out.

 

But, I'm sorry to learn that self-interest, power-hunger, and greed are endemic only to those of Euro heritage.

 

It's a pity that so many minds are limited to a narrow focus of pathological racial/cultural self-loathing.

 

THIS is post of the year!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

It's a good debate, but numbing all the same. We could win without a shot being fired.

 

We could all just start pressuring the oil lobbyist/politicians to make home grown bio-fuels our MAIN NATIONAL PRIORITY. This way we can cut out the middle east altogether, and we'll never have to deal with any of them again.

 

I'd go out and buy a car that runs on corn. Just let me buy my 50,000 acres of cornfields first (and fortify them).

 

Europe is far more dependent on Middle East Oil than the US is.

[noliquidity]

Thats true, but a person who shall remain nameless went and shoved a big fucking stick in the eye of some guy named Chavez. OOPS!!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Thats true, but a person who shall remain nameless went and shoved a big fucking stick in the eye of some guy named Chavez. OOPS!!

 

I'm sorry Hillary will fix all that within days of her inauguration.

[noliquidity]

I stopped believing in fairy tales in about 1974.

[cj001f]

Thats true, but a person who shall remain nameless went and shoved a big fucking stick in the eye of some guy named Chavez. OOPS!!

 

I'm sorry Hillary will fix all that within days of her inauguration.

 

McCain had a chance, until he found Jesus

[noliquidity]

I thought James Dobson was still trying to decide if Jesus would be an acceptable candidate.

[sexual_chocolate]

In fact, the last hundred years of Mid-East policy has basically been a continous disaster because we keep trying to manage and manipulate cultures and tribes in the Mid-East like they are in Central America.

 

Here's where you are entirely wrong.

 

The last hundred years of Mid-East policy has been a resounding success, playing out in a manner supported by BOTH parties (wow, we in this democracy really live in a two party state!).

 

The US and other western nations have continued to maintain access ("access"? is this fair to say? is "control" more accurate?)to hydrocarbons through the machinations (and other market developments, manipulations etc) that we are speaking of in iran.

 

the iranian blowback is certainly a consequence of this meddling, but to rate US foreign policy as a "failure" because of this instance is a bit over-reaching; i would think it would simply be called a statistical "necessity" in the bigger FP game of geopolitics.