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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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 Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| stillnotking wrote: |
| Carter was a pretty bad President, but in fairness, he inherited most of his disasters. Especially on Iran, which Joo persists in wanting to assign Carter sole responsibility for. The US "withdrawing its support" for the Shah did not precipitate the Iranian Revolution. The US installing the Shah as a puppet monarch in 1953 precipitated the Revolution. Iran was a kettle that came to a boil over twenty-five years, not three. |
could have gotten to Khomeni and supported the Shah .
Things didn't have to be the way they were. |
What, specifically, should Jimmy Carter have done to prevent the Iranian Revolution? Invade and occupy?
Bear in mind that the American installation and backing of the Shah was among the biggest reasons he was considered illegitimate by his own people, and therefore one of the biggest reasons for the 1979 Revolution.
There was one very specific, concrete, unassailable thing that the United States could have done to prevent Khomeini from ever being more than a renegade nutcase. That specific action was not acting on the British demand to get rid of Mossadeq. By the way, All the Shah's Men is an excellent book about Operation Ajax, why it was done, and its aftermath.
Period. Anything Carter did was long after the fact. He had to deal with the rockslide created by the 1953 pebble. Like I said previously, it is no fairer to hold Carter solely responsible for the Revolution than it would be to hold Bush solely responsible for 9/11. In both cases the events had long, complicated, shameful antecedents. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| ... No, try as they might to switch the 'honor' to someone other than George Bush, the conservatives won't succeed in changing the national opinion that Bush is the worst president in our history. |
While I certainly think that, got a link? |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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| How exactly is this thread a current event? |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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"stillnotking"]
W
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hat, specifically, should Jimmy Carter have done to prevent the Iranian Revolution? Invade and occupy?
Bear in mind that the American installation and backing of the Shah was among the biggest reasons he was considered illegitimate by his own people, and therefore one of the biggest reasons for the 1979 Revolution.
There was one very specific, concrete, unassailable thing that the United States could have done to prevent Khomeini from ever being more than a renegade nutcase. That specific action was not acting on the British demand to get rid of Mossadeq. By the way, All the Shah's Men is an excellent book about Operation Ajax, why it was done, and its aftermath.
Period. Anything Carter did was long after the fact. He had to deal with the rockslide created by the 1953 pebble. Like I said previously, it is no fairer to hold Carter solely responsible for the Revolution than it would be to hold Bush solely responsible for 9/11. In both cases the events had long, complicated, shameful antecedents. |
Start with killing or throwing Khomeni in a secret prison. He was giving interviews in France. He said what he was going to do. Assassinate Khomeni in cold blood.
Carter pushed the Shah on human rights Khomeni's followers took advantage of it.Carter withheld tear gas , rubber bullets and water cannons. Carters own adviser Brizeniski wanted the US to get the Shah to turn the military loose on the revolution. Instead listened to people like Andy Young who saw Khomeni as a saint.
It would be fair to put half the blame on Bush for 9-11 the other half ought to be on the previous administration.
Nevertheless what would have liberals said if the US bombed Afghanistan before 9-11. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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1970's
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The Carter administration blocked exports of tear gas and rubber bullets to Iran, and was also implicated by some commentators in a scandal involving Jimmy Carter demanding financial favours from the Shah. Some also attributed these actions against the Shah to Carter's attempts to warm up to the Soviet Union. Prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Iran had one of the world's largest number of students residing in the United States.
In 1979, Iranians revolted and the Shah was ousted for a second time. Ayatollah Khomeini became Iran's new leader and soon began issuing vicious rhetoric against the United States, describing the country as the "Great Satan" and a "nation of infidels."
The American administration under President Jimmy Carter refused to give the Shah any further support and expressed no interest in attempting to return him to power. A significant embarrassment for Carter occurred when the Shah, as of that time suffering from cancer, requested entry into the United States for treatment. After pressure from Kissinger and Rockefeller, among other pro-Shah political figures, Carter reluctantly agreed, but the move was used by the Iranian revolutionaries' to justify their claims that the former monarch was an American puppet and led to the storming of the American embassy by radical students allied with the Khomeini faction. |
http://www.angrysmile.com/america_fp.htm
Look closely it is not a pro war site.
Giving radical Islam its start
By Dinesh D'Souza
Monday, January 29, 2007
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n 1979, Qutb�s goal was achieved when the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran. The importance of the Khomeini revolution is that it demonstrated the viability of the Islamic theocracy in the modern age. And to this day post-Khomeini Iran provides a viable model of what the Islamic radicals hope to achieve throughout the Muslim world.
Khomeini also popularized the idea of America as a �great Satan.� Before Khomeini, no Muslim head of state had said this about America. Khomeini was also the first Muslim leader in the modern era to advocate violence as a religious duty and to give special place to martyrdom. Since Khomeini, Islamic radicalism has continued to attract aspiring martyrs ready to confront the Great Satan. In this sense, the seeds of 9/11 were sown a quarter of a century ago when Khomeini came to power.
Khomeini�s ascent to power was aided by the policies of Jimmy Carter and his allies on the political left. Carter was elected president in 1976 by stressing his support for human rights. From the time he took office, the left contrasted Carter�s rights doctrine with the Shah�s practices. The left denounced the Shah as a vicious and corrupt dictator, highlighting and in some cases magnifying his misdeeds. Left-leaning officials such as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, UN envoy Andrew Young, and State Department human rights officer Patricia Derian pressed Carter to sever America�s longstanding alliance with the Shah. Eventually Carter came to agree with his liberal advisers that he could not in good conscience support the Shah.
When the Shah moved to arrest mullahs who called for his overthrow, leftists in America and Europe denounced these actions. Former diplomat George Ball called on the U.S. government to curtail the Shah�s exercise of power. Acceding to this pressure, Carter called for the release of political prisoners and warned the Shah not to use force against the demonstrators in the streets.
When the Shah petitioned the Carter administration to purchase tear gas and riot control gear, the human rights office in the State Department held up the request. Some, like State Department official Henry Precht, urged the U.S. to prepare the way for the shah to make a �graceful exit� from power. William Miller, chief of staff on the Democrat-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, said America had nothing to fear from Khomeini since he would be a progressive force for human rights. U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan even compared Khomeini to Mahatma Gandhi, and Andrew Young termed the ayatollah a �twentieth century saint.�
As the resistance gained momentum and the Shah�s position weakened, he looked to the United States government to help him. Carter aide Gary Sick reports that the Shah discovered many enemies, and few friends, in the Carter administration. Increasingly paranoid, the Shah pleaded with the United States to help him stay in power. Carter refused. Deprived of his last hope, with the Persian rug pulled out from under him, the Shah decided to abdicate. The Carter administration encouraged him to do so, and the cultural left celebrated his departure. The result, of course, was Khomeini.
The Carter administration�s role in assisting with the downfall of the Shah is one of America�s great foreign policy disasters of the twentieth century. In trying to get rid of the bad guy, Carter got the worse guy. His failure, as former Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, was the result of being �unable to distinguish between America�s friends and enemies.� Carter does not deserve sole discredit for these actions. This intellectual framework that shaped Carter�s misguided strategy was supplied by the political left.
By aiding the Shah�s ouster and with Khomeini�s consolidation of power, the left collaborated in giving radical Islam its greatest victory in the modern era. Incredibly this same cast of characters who lost Iran wants to block Bush�s policies in Iraq. In doing so they are playing with fire. The radical Muslims who already control Iran are trying to bring a second major state, Iraq, into their orbit. Then, they have said, they will target Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Yes, Iraq maybe a mess but in trying to get out of a bad situation, we don�t want to create a worse situation. Insurgency and sectarian strife is dangerous, but Iraq in the hands of Iranian fanatics or Al Qaeda fanatics is far more dangerous. America doesn�t need more foolish advice from Jimmy Carter. What it needs from him is an apology.
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Pluto wrote: |
It is interesting. There are striking similarities between Reza Pahlavi and President Musharraf of Pakistan. The Shah was criticized for being to harsh and not opening up political liberties although he had Communists on one side and Islamic fundamentalists on the other. The Shah had to strike a delicate balance if he was going to modernize Iranian society. So when the US withdrew its support because of the human rights situation, we ended up with something much much worse.
Pervez Musharraf is often criticized on the left for being too autocratic. Like the Shah's Iran, the military also is the only functioning service in Pakistan. Also, the military seems to give more allegiance to Musharraf than its constitution. Nevertheless, there remains a very small, albeit strong, fundamentalist Islamic presence that is ready to take over Islamabad any day. Important lessons from history remain true today.
(I hope that when people study world affairs such as these that they would understand why a Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich administration would be such a disaster  ) |
If Musharif was as ruthless as mideast dictators there would be no chance he would ever be overthrown. |
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stillnotking
Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Location: Oregon, USA
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| Start with killing or throwing Khomeni in a secret prison. He was giving interviews in France. He said what he was going to do. Assassinate Khomeni in cold blood. |
The only thing that would have changed was the name of the guy who became Ayatollah. Also, it's worth pointing out that the Iranian Revolution was not originally Islamist, at least not a majority of it. It was all kinds of disaffected groups. Marxists were a major component, actually a bigger component than the Islamists at the beginning IIRC. In fact it was something of a shock to most Iranians that they wound up living in a theocracy. If it was a shock to them, how was Carter supposed to foresee it?
| Quote: |
| Carter pushed the Shah on human rights Khomeni's followers took advantage of it.Carter withheld tear gas , rubber bullets and water cannons. Carters own adviser Brizeniski wanted the US to get the Shah to turn the military loose on the revolution. Instead listened to people like Andy Young who saw Khomeni as a saint. |
So the Shah was deposed because he didn't have enough rubber bullets? Well, that's a novel reason, anyway. I guess the French nobility just needed a few more wooden swords.
I just don't think you're looking deeply enough at the causes and constituencies of the Iranian Revolution. If Khomeini had died, or the Shah had cracked down, the most that could have happened was to delay its onset. Of course, this gets back to my fundamental critique of modern American foreign policy: we suffer a persistent delusion that we are capable of ordering world events to our liking, free of unintended consequences. You don't know what would have happened if the US had intervened in Iran in 1979. It might very easily have turned out even worse than it did. Something major and chaotic would have happened, that much is certain. The Iranian people had simply had enough of the Shah.
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| It would be fair to put half the blame on Bush for 9-11 the other half ought to be on the previous administration. |
I don't even think half is fair. 9/11 was a one-off. It succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its planners, and no one really could have anticipated it. (Yeah, I know about the infamous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US" memo, but how many of those does Bush get every day, and how could he have known it would be so much more extreme than the previous WTC attack?)
Our foreign policy needs to be based around two simple things: deterrence, in the case of state actors; and intelligence, in the case of nonstate actors. It also needs to contain a healthy amount of common sense about what we should and should not undertake, when it comes to using the US military to enforce a particular political order halfway around the world. Our history since WWII, with the notable exception of Korea, has shown that we are way better at f***ing things up in that respect than at fixing them.
And yes, we will be attacked by terrorists sometimes. There is literally nothing we can do to prevent that. What we can do is minimize the consequences, especially in regard to nuclear proliferation. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:10 am Post subject: |
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| The only thing that would have changed was the name of the guy who became Ayatollah. Also, it's worth pointing out that the Iranian Revolution was not originally Islamist, at least not a majority of it. It was all kinds of disaffected groups. Marxists were a major component, actually a bigger component than the Islamists at the beginning IIRC. In fact it was something of a shock to most Iranians that they wound up living in a theocracy. If it was a shock to them, how was Carter supposed to foresee it? |
Ayatollah was the worst alternative.
Khomeni was going around giving speaches in France. By the time the Shah was falliing it was clear that he was number one.
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| So the Shah was deposed because he didn't have enough rubber bullets? Well, that's a novel reason, anyway. I guess the French nobility just needed a few more wooden swords. |
Who knows.
Rubber bullets plus no Khomeni. It is not just one thing.
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| I just don't think you're looking deeply enough at the causes and constituencies of the Islamic Revolution. If Khomeini had died, or the Shah had cracked down, the most that could have happened was to delay its onset. Of course, this gets back to my fundamental critique of modern American foreign policy: we suffer a persistent delusion that we are capable of ordering world events to our liking, free of unintended consequences. You don't know what would have happened if the US had intervened in Iran in 1979. It might very easily have turned out even worse than it did. Something major and chaotic would have happened, that much is certain. The Iranian people had simply had enough of the Shah. |
There was no worse than it did.
the Shah was the only mideast regime to fall , Khaddafy , Assad and Saddam did not fall.
They keep power cause they crush opposition.
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I don't even think half is fair. 9/11 was a one-off. It succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its planners, and no one really could have anticipated it. (Yeah, I know about the infamous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US" memo, but how many of those does Bush get every day, and how could he have known it would be so much more extreme than the previous WTC attack?)
Our foreign policy needs to be based around two simple things: deterrence, in the case of state actors; and intelligence, in the case of nonstate actors. It also needs to contain a healthy amount of common sense about what we should and should not undertake, when it comes to using the US military to enforce a particular political order halfway around the world. Our history since WWII, with the notable exception of Korea, has shown that we are way better at f***ing things up in that respect than at fixing them.
And yes, we will be attacked by terrorists sometimes. There is literally nothing we can do to prevent that. What we can do is minimize the consequences, especially in regard to nuclear proliferation. |
Overall a very good analysis for this.
Except with Al Qaeda deterence won't work and it might not work in the case of the the Bathists and Iran. |
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greedy_bones
Joined: 01 Jul 2007
Location: not quite sure anymore
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:15 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| No, try as they might to switch the 'honor' to someone other than George Bush, the conservatives won't succeed in changing the national opinion that Bush is the worst president in our history. |
Bush is pretty bad, but there were a few that were worse. Andrew Jackson was pretty bad. So was Andrew Johnson. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:29 pm Post subject: |
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| greedy_bones wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| No, try as they might to switch the 'honor' to someone other than George Bush, the conservatives won't succeed in changing the national opinion that Bush is the worst president in our history. |
Bush is pretty bad, but there were a few that were worse. Andrew Jackson was pretty bad. So was Andrew Johnson. |
Who cares about Presidents. The real power is in the Supreme Court, and it is loaded with Republican appointees. |
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