Drum: Why Do We Put Up With Saudi Arabia?
Maybe We Don't Have Much Of A Choice
I have long thought we should cut those bastards loose...but, like Drum, I realize I'm not privy to all the info, and I don't have to balance considerations nor look for another ally in the ME...
Unlike Drum, I'm less willing to reject the idea of Iran as an alternative. Yes, yes, they're a major sponsor of terrorism...and there's that whole nukes thing...but, hey, nobody's perfect amirite? I don't have very good reasons for this. I'm mostly just carrying around a lot of guilt because we are the ones that fucked them over remember that????
Well...we and the Brits, anyway... Iran was a reasonably good, modern place on a reasonably good trajectory (or so the common account of the history goes) before we, y'know, murdered Mossaddegh and inflicted the Shah and his psychotic police state on them so we could have their oil...which of course then led to the revolution which imposed a Medieval theocracy on them... Oh, right then there was that little thing where we--by which I mean the Reagan administration--sold weapons to Saddam Hussein so he could launch his lunatic human wave attacks against them... And all that's not to even mention the Vincennes shooting down flight 655...that was a whole other thing... So...I don't think I'm going way out on a limb here to say that we owe them. Iran's a problem, but that's largely our damn fault.
And I'm always surprised when I meet Iranians who don't hate us. WTF? We hate them. Imagine what we'd be like if they had done to us 1/100th of what we've done to them. I mean...supplying Iraqi insurgents with IEDs is no trivial matter...but it's pretty minor in comparative terms in the larger scheme of things.
So...for these not-terribly-good reasons, and not really being able to understand what's going on in Iran politically now...I've long thought we ought to apologize our asses off and make a big push to normalize relations with them. Might weaken the hardliners even maybe?
Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about on the latter points. But I have great confidence in the proposition: we screwed the Iranian people hard, and we owe them.
I have long thought we should cut those bastards loose...but, like Drum, I realize I'm not privy to all the info, and I don't have to balance considerations nor look for another ally in the ME...
Unlike Drum, I'm less willing to reject the idea of Iran as an alternative. Yes, yes, they're a major sponsor of terrorism...and there's that whole nukes thing...but, hey, nobody's perfect amirite? I don't have very good reasons for this. I'm mostly just carrying around a lot of guilt because we are the ones that fucked them over remember that????
Well...we and the Brits, anyway... Iran was a reasonably good, modern place on a reasonably good trajectory (or so the common account of the history goes) before we, y'know, murdered Mossaddegh and inflicted the Shah and his psychotic police state on them so we could have their oil...which of course then led to the revolution which imposed a Medieval theocracy on them... Oh, right then there was that little thing where we--by which I mean the Reagan administration--sold weapons to Saddam Hussein so he could launch his lunatic human wave attacks against them... And all that's not to even mention the Vincennes shooting down flight 655...that was a whole other thing... So...I don't think I'm going way out on a limb here to say that we owe them. Iran's a problem, but that's largely our damn fault.
And I'm always surprised when I meet Iranians who don't hate us. WTF? We hate them. Imagine what we'd be like if they had done to us 1/100th of what we've done to them. I mean...supplying Iraqi insurgents with IEDs is no trivial matter...but it's pretty minor in comparative terms in the larger scheme of things.
So...for these not-terribly-good reasons, and not really being able to understand what's going on in Iran politically now...I've long thought we ought to apologize our asses off and make a big push to normalize relations with them. Might weaken the hardliners even maybe?
Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about on the latter points. But I have great confidence in the proposition: we screwed the Iranian people hard, and we owe them.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:19 PM
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