Quote:
Originally Posted by StuartD
Iran did have democracy until the US stepped in to undermine it and place a person of their choosing in power.... of course, it was done so at England's request....
which led to American hostages, which led to hostilities, which led to where we are today.
As "the sultan of smut" said, far too late for this... the US should have kept it's nose out 50 years ago.
Which makes me wonder, in all this time... could history be repeating itself?
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Its easy to make hindsight arguments with the benefit of having 30 years to look at the issue and its after effects.
Such arguments do not take into account the issues of the day, the threats of the day, the national security interests of the day, the shifting of threats and interests at that time, predicted future shifts and so on. the decision to fuck with Iran's leadership wasn't just a random act by some bored people.
At the end of the day for example, we took a totally lawless nation 100% in support of terrorism, training terrorists and exporting terrorism who was harboring Bin Laden, like Afghanistan and turned it into a democracy where more people participate in elections than idiots in this nation do. Similar thing happening in Iraq - although its not the popular thing to talk about obvious successes.
Are those two countries perfect today? Of course not. there will be a lot of continued difficulty associated with making the transition from an autocratic state ran by a brutal, genocidal regime or a theocratic state governed by random idiots, toting AK-47's, running around raping and killing and beating the shit out of people in the name of "Sharia Law" - but to deny the positive change and the positive direction these nations are taking right in the middle of some of the worlds most volatile and unstable nations is being disingenuous.
Bush will never be remembered for anything good in the West. He will be remembered for being the poorly spoken, redneck jackass that he often was. That's the nature of history. It is the middle east in 50 years that will still remember Bush... just as when i moved to Russia in 96 for 10 years and people were still remembering and regularly discussing Reagan and his role in bringing down the Soviet Union.
To say that the changes in the last 10 years in the middle east, the emergence of new democracies and their success have had ZERO influence on today's events in Iran is not a very intellectually honest position.