Posted on 02/06/2013 12:48:18 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
Yeah I kind of touched on that in another post. A lot of the people that think America is evil are in the ruling class putting us on that evil path. Which is self condemning, but also they are in the position to know.
This just presented itself to me this morning from out of the past. It’s from 2002.
http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1693.cfm
Funny how some subjects just won’t let go.
Hey, we allied with Stalin in WWII. We did that to defeat Hitler. Stalin was absolutely as evil as Hitler, but we allied with him to defeat an evil, Nazism, that was more of direct threat to the world. That's what a lot of diplomacy is....taking the best of two bad alternatives. To say we're evil because we ally with some disreputable people from time to time is standing reality on its head. And if we're evil because we, the country, make mistakes, then you're expecting perfection. Humans aren't perfect. They make mistakes. That does not make them evil.
Creative editing on your part, let’s look at that section again including the WHOLE sentence:
backing the Shah
backing Marcos
backing Duvalier
we backed a lot of really bad people during the Cold War
This was WWII, and by and large they weren’t the lesser of two evils. We could have backed good people in those countries, but during the Cold War our rule was pretty simple “anybody that doesn’t take money from Russia is AOK in our book”. And understand that unlike WWII these people we were backing were fighting against their own people, there was no common enemy, they wanted to keep power. When you’re keeping blood thirsty dictators in power because you’re afraid their replacements MIGHT side with Russia that’s pretty close to evil. And I didn’t say “we” are evil, I said our government (which isn’t us) did some evil things. I’m not expecting perfection, I’m pointing out that if one thinks of the government and people as one entity (which you shouldn’t) one could look at the things our government has done and conclude (incorrectly) the America as a whole is evil.
Yes we backed the Shah. That was to try to stop communists or radical anti-American elements from taking over. Then we helped depose the Shah. What was the consequence of that?
We didn’t help depose the Shah, we protected him. And the consequences come from that history of backing evil people against their own people. If we’d have picked some decent human beings to back during the Cold War we wouldn’t be in the middle of this war on terror now, we created this loathing of America in these regions by making sure the guy executing large numbers of the people had an American flag behind him at least figuratively at all times.
And what decent people were there in Iran whom we should have backed?
How about those Iranian Moderates Reagan backed. There’s sane people everywhere, but when you back a bloodthirsty dictator those sane people don’t like you, so then in Iran they sided with the not sane people to get rid of the puppet of the “Great Satan”, now here we are, they still hate us. Or maybe we just shouldn’t have been playing puppet master picking leaders of other countries, in the long run it didn’t do us any good, the long game would have gone better if Russia wound up the Great Satan.
I’m talking 1953 when we supported the Shah against a communist sympathizer. Do you think it would have been better for a leftist/communist friendly government to take over Iran rather than the Shah? And Reagan was elected after the Iranian revolution of 1979 which put the Islamists in power. Because Carter let the Shah get deposed. I put a lot of government actions as stupid rather than evil. There is a distinction.
Let the communist sympathizer win. Then Russia is the bad guys backing a secularist dictator that becomes unpopular with the people and eventually gets overthrown. They get to be the Great Satan still hated by the people, they get to be the favorite target of terrorists, we get to keep the WTC, we don’t get stuck invading Afghanistan and Iraq. The big punchline of the Cold War is that we didn’t need to back the scumbags we backed, we know this because we won the Cold War a decade AFTER most of our favorite pets got overthrown.
There was really no “let” when Iran flipped. All the analysts said they weren’t going to have a revolution, next thing you know the revolution won. Iran went scary fast.
Backing a guy that you KNOW is executing his people in droves is evil. Period. We backed evil people, we backed people we KNEW were evil, and we helped them remain in power where they got to do more evil. That’s evil. Our government performed evil acts by helping evil people stay in power.
Yeah, the Shah was more evil than communists. Sure. Have a nice day.
Operation Ajax is hardly ever mentioned in historical discussions these days. Most people’s view of Iran begins with 1979.
It’s not about more or less, it’s about evil. The Shah was evil, period. We supported him, period. By supporting him we got a mediocre ally for 26 years. Then he got overthrown, and the resultant government is still in charge 34 years later, and still hates us. So both on the moral level and the long game strategic level we LOST by supporting the Shah. We allied with a scumbag and that country still hates us for it.
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