<b>"There is no such thing as America running around installing governments most people donât want." </b> <b>"Facts are facts: plenty of Iranians liked the Shah. Without that support, we could influence nothing."</b> Wrong. What, there's no such thing as an illegitimate or unpopular governemnt that seizes and maintains power through force? Every governemnt that exists, exists with the support of the people? I'm sure oppressed satellites like the Czechs and the Afghanis agreed when it came to the USSR. Hey, people liked the Soviets, otherwise they couldn't have influenced anything! Listen. Mossadegh was democratically elected and POPULAR, and was NOT turning toward the USSR. The Shah was not popular, was an autocrat, and used the horrible SAVAK for a lot of wonderful things. The whole reason Khomeini won popularity among the students AND conservative nationalists, as well as hardline traditional Muslims, was <b>because</b> the Shah was so close to the U.S. Iranians hated how Carter let him on U.S. soil. Hardliners gained the general support of parts of the populace because Iranians were afraid of being a pawn of Western (or Russian) control -- which they knew was a very real danger after decades years of dictatorship. Mossadegh was the most popular, most Western, most sane option there was, and he was booted for the sake of oil. To quote Albright: <i>"The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America."</i> This is history, these are the facts, and you can read them anywhere. Your bizarre spin based on your need to project your psychological conflicts onto history, is not. Pinochet. Panama. Saddam. The Shah. Marcos. Suharto. These are all examples of unpopular regimes that were either implanted by the U.S. or supported by the U.S. in the name of realpolitik. The USSR did it too, and they were just as responsible for what came after. I also don't think you understand anything about how there were different Communist and Socialist ideas as they existed in certain regions in the past. For instance, you justified Pinochet's brutal dictatorship based on the idea that the "Communists" were going to go wild and kill all the capitalists. Allende was democratically elected. He was a democratic socialist. He had 6 years to be President before the opportunity for another to be elected. He had NO control over the military (that was Pinochet), and the Christian Democratic opposition party was represented in government. There was NO way he could have massacred anyone -- especially when his platform was popular among everyone but the landowners and business class. If you have no revolutionary militia and the military doesn't like you, you can't kill anyone. He was assassinated based on the flawed, narrow minded ideology of the time -- which no politician afterwards, left or right, could comfortably justify. The violent, evil Marxist regimes in Cuba, Cambodia, China, the USSR were different from what was happening in places like Vietnam (would have been popularly elected, hated the Chinese and Russians), or Chile, and Venezuela and Bolivia today. I am by all means no Marxist in even the slightest sense, but I recognize that during these times Marxism became a way to push out damaging Western influence and move toward self-determination. Down the road, with different alignment, they would have the opportunity to open markets if they chose, just like China has done, or bankrupt their country until a legitimate pro-liberal party got voted in. The U.S. was also protectionist, mercantillist, state-subsidized early on in its development. If it hadn't it wouldn't exist like this today, and capitalism wouldn't function today in this way. By all means, Communism and Islamic totalitarianism should disappear from history. Nigeria is a backwards, horrible part of the world. Cuba is still run by oppressive tyrants who once were a threat to U.S. security. But when the majority of U.S. voters are people who can't understand history outside of some cliched "left vs. right" conflict, and have no ethical principles -- who justify decades of brutal dictatorship BECAUSE OIL IS PRICEY (you did say that) -- you can anticipate progress in at-risk countries will be set back by generations. I absolutely question your ethics because I think they're either painfully uninformed or borderline sociopathic. The issue is learning how to step outside of one's own national interest and observe world events objectively, and to understand how cause and effect work. Because you have no ethics, I bet if you had been born in North Korea, you'd be railing -- not against leftists or some paranoid conspiracy theory about CAIR -- but against the American Imperialist dog. If China had staged a coup in the U.S. to overthrow Bush and replace him with a sympathetic proto-Communist, while organizing sanctions against us, you would be rattling your sabre and calling for blood -- not trying to spin some ridiculous notion that China has a right to meddle in any country's affairs to protect its national interests.
If you don't understand your own question, if you can't define "believe in God" then you really are a moron. So I think to myself, could this guy really be such a moron that he asks questions that he doesn't even know the meaning of? I mean, is there really anyone that dimwitted here at ET? Is he really that much of a moron? Yes, apparently you really are that much of a moron.
lol... gotcha again Every time you post these days, I have this image of a guy who has just slipped on an icy sidewalk. Arms flailing, about to go down hard, he has an expression of surprise on his face. Z, I swear to you, you've declined, man. You spend so much time responding to people from across the political spectrum who post to point out that you're a fool, even your posts that aren't flames sound like flames. Look up the word 'defensive' in the dictionary and there is a petri dish of you there. Of course, given the daily pounding you get here, you would be defensive; I cannot blame you. That's all for now. I will toy with you, like a cat toys with a mouse, some time soon, but not too soon. It has become rather boring. Now run along and fume about me with your chat-room buddy. ____________________________ Member of the Anti-Troll Brigade iustus ignarus troll
that certainly has rhetorical power, but if you look at the wealth gap in our society it's growing faster under this administration than ever before it's one thing for the left to try and advocate the underclass, but another entirely for the right to actually create more of that underclass what's the point, that it's somehow evil to advocate the lower class?
The Left "advocates" for the underclass? Seems to me via their programs - economic, social, and cultural - that are based on misguided ideals of entitlement, they merely perpetuate the cycles that keep the "underclass" underclassed. But it does wonders in terms of keeping them a mainstay of their voting block. As for the Right, well, since Halliburton is running everything, all those bastards want is oil and nation-building contracts....verdad?
i'm personally not a big believer in entitlement schemes, but at some point the bottom line has to be examined. in this case, social spending is increasingly diverted to war costs paid out to our recently privatized military. (so yes, HAL, etc) the wealth transfer from taxpayer to corporation is rocketing at a time when price inflation and wage stagnation are dissolving the middle class at breakneck pace. i'm not advocating leftist entitlement schemes, but at the same time neoconservative policies are creating a larger eventual need for them so this argument of liberals being 'best friends' with islamic extremists is deeply short sighted and just another piece of meaningless rhetoric. happy to hear more than a 'nicely put' or a 'so true' from anyone who's willing to look deeper than the surface of the comment
Who said liberals ? The analogy was/is between the Left=Chavez and Islamic extremism=Ahmadinejad Nobody said anything about Dems or Libs per se.