Silence in Syria, Panic in Iran

[lI1|1!]

GOIN TO THE MOON BRB

 

The moon is made out of cheese.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Here's a moon for ya:

 

[Brianmoore]

 

For the trillions we've spent on our Middle Eastern policy, we could have been energy independent years ago. It has been a very poor investment.

 

 

This should be the post of the day! :tup:

[catbirdseat]

It would have been a good investment for the country as a whole but not for certain of our business interests who pull the strings.

[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.

 

 

 

Actually not. For the trillions we've spent on our Middle Eastern policy, we could have been energy independent years ago. It has been a very poor investment.

 

My post was from what i assume to be the cheney bush etal perspective, although i'm hardly sure that what you say is true.

[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.

 

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

 

I didn't say that, I said for the most part we've continuously shot ourselves in the foot with our attempts at 'diplomacy' in the Mid-East.

 

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

 

Criticism of the long-term failure of some U.S. regional foreign policies has nothing to do with 'self-loathing' anymore than saying that end-to-end 'planning' for the war in Iraq was a vast exercise in misdirected incompetence guided by equally faulty perceptions of how the folks in Iraq and across the Mid-East would perceive and respond to our invasion.

 

It's amazing to me how many guises, rationales, and counter-accusations exist to compensate for what comes down to brazen incompetence. Saying our Mid-East policies have been a great success is like a Brit in 1755 saying what a success their Americas policies had been.

[noliquidity]

Yea, I'm still trying to figure out where all this success is leading us next.

 

Dude, you writing is easily publishable, and thats not an exaggeration.

(I'm still learning how to spell:)

[JosephH]

Thanks, I have published quite a bit, but mostly technical, though I did have an article in Climbing back in '78.

 

Funny, especially given the current conversations, my writing was completely bullsh#t until '86 when I ended up charged with producing a course and book for a company as part of a small but excellent team. Over the course of that year I was mercilessly whipped senseless by the editor assigned to me. She was an Iranian refugee and a stunningly beautiful woman with an aristocratic manner and bearing.

 

Her husband and many of his family were murdered during the overthrow of the Shah. She felt her life had only been spared on a whim by the 18 year old Mullah she was brought before. She was told to leave the country immediately and that her children would be taken care of. She left with essentially the clothes on her back and made it to the U.S. over the course of two years via Italy. Seven years after the revolution she still had no idea what happened to her children.

 

I think the best compliment I got from her was - "nothing escapes you after the fourth time you've heard it..."

[noliquidity]

Thanks, I have published quite a bit, but mostly technical, though I did have an article in Climbing back in '78.

 

Funny, especially given the current conversations, my writing was completely bullsh#t until '86 when I ended up charged with producing a course and book for a company as part of a small but excellent team. Over the course of that year I was mercilessly whipped senseless by the editor assigned to me. She was an Iranian refugee and a stunningly beautiful woman with an aristocratic manner and bearing.

 

Her husband and many of his family were murdered during the overthrow of the Shah. She felt her life had only been spared on a whim by the 18 year old Mullah she was brought before. She was told to leave the country immediately and that her children would be taken care of. She left with essentially the clothes on her back and made it to the U.S. over the course of two years via Italy. Seven years after the revolution she still had no idea what happened to her children.

 

I think the best compliment I got from her was - "nothing escapes you after the fourth time you've heard it..."

 

 

Putting a human face on the region I beleive is one component that could lead to change. The mass desensitization and outright censorship of the true human cost is truely stunning. I grew up with the belief that what I was being fed by the mainstream media was actually reality. We are living through what is probably the most sophisticated propoganda campaign in history. The frightenening thing is that the current generation of kids have nothing to compare it to. To them it IS reality. All for a black liquid substance.

 

 

What and how you write makes a positive difference.

 

 

Edited October 18, 2007 by noliquidity

[tvashtarkatena]

What about putting a smiley face on the region?

 

 

[kevbone]

Saying our Mid-East policies have been a great success is like a Brit in 1755 saying what a success their Americas policies had been.

 

 

JH....did someone here actually say that? Or anywhere for that matter?

[joblo7]

Thanks, I have published quite a bit, but mostly We are living through what is probably the most sophisticated propoganda campaign in history. The frightenening thing is that the current generation of kids have nothing to compare it to. To them it IS reality. All for a black liquid substance.

 

ABSOLUTELY CORRECT.THIS IS THE COMPONENT THAT ALSO GUARANTEES AT LEAST 50 YEARS OF THIS BRAINWASHED PUBLIC OPINION.

JUST LOOK AT ITS EFFECT ON POSTERS HERE........

[ClimbingPanther]

i think it's the variable most often used. realpolitik and all. i'm not saying it's how i define "success", but it's certainly the metric used by many, including some at this site.

 

you cannot defines omething you cantf athom

[sexual_chocolate]

i think it's the variable most often used. realpolitik and all. i'm not saying it's how i define "success", but it's certainly the metric used by many, including some at this site.

 

you cannot defines omething you cantf athom

 

 

care to expand? since i have no idea what you are talking about....

[KaskadskyjKozak]

i think it's the variable most often used. realpolitik and all. i'm not saying it's how i define "success", but it's certainly the metric used by many, including some at this site.

 

you cannot defines omething you cantf athom

 

 

care to expand? since i have no idea what you are talking about....

 

don't tell him... that'll teach him for not paying attention to every cc.com spray topic

[ClimbingPanther]

SC, you will find enlightenment here:

 

http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/729402/page/0#Post729402

[Seahawks]

Thought this was interesting. Possible Nuclear site.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303197,00.html

[tvashtarkatena]

Thought this was interesting. Possible Nuclear site.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303197,00.html

 

Nah. It was a mobile chemical weapons facility.