That data is from SIPRI, as indicated in the chart notes.
Posted on 04/19/2003 12:08:44 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
A few days ago, I walked into a local small business owned by a naturalized American citizen who was from Iran. During our conversation, the owner asked me what I thought about the U.S. and Coalition forces invading Iraq.
I said that in my opinion Jimmy Carter and his State Department were totally responsible for this war, Iraq's slaughtering of its own citizens, and the tragic war with Iran.
The shop owner grabbed me and gave me a "bear-hug." He said that in his 20 years living in America, I was the only American who understood what Iranians have known about Jimmy Carter from the beginning.
He agreed with me that Jimmy Carter started the dominoes falling that eventually created the chaos that led to the present and recent wars in the Gulf.
Thousands of Iraqi citizens now fleeing the Gulf II War zone will join thousands of Iranians who fled during the "Reign of Terror" which the Ayatollah Khomeini unleashed after then-President Jimmy Carter decided to make a regime change by pulling U.S. support from the Shah of Iran. The Shah and his administration were suppressing Islamic fundamentalists who wanted to return Iran to the 7th century under Islamic law.
President Carter's advisors were out of touch with reality. Like Don Quixote, they raced in, without regard to reality, to vanquish the Shah and his attempt to modernize Iran.
The consulting company I worked for at that time sent their Iranian office manager and engineering staff to a technical symposium in Pasadena, CA. The staff from our Tehran office was not so concerned about the technical presentation as they were about the pending disaster that President Carter was about to create, since his State Department was removing all support for the Shah. After all, it was argued, the kindly religious leaders of Iran would install a peaceful socialist government and save the country from the upheaval of Westernization.
Our office manager, a Jordanian Christian, recommended that we cease soliciting contracts from the Shah's government because its days were numbered. He recommended finishing the existing construction jobs and moving the office to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was worried we might not be paid for the existing work, and certain we would not be paid for any work done for a replacement government.
We had moved his family to Riyadh and also recommended that all other employees move there for their safety.
When the Shah fell, the Ayatollah Khomeini promised a welfare state that would outshine anything the Shah had done for Iran. Of course, his real objective was to use Iran as a launching pad for radical Islamic rule of the Middle East.
The Ayatollah unleashed a blood bath against his enemies. Americans in the Embassy were taken hostage for 444 days, and the economy of Iran plummeted into chaos.
As the Ayatollah encouraged radical Islamic uprisings in surrounding countries, we decided to contain Iran by using the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. We supplied him with a massive arms buildup, which apparently included chemical, and perhaps even biological, weapons.
The 15,000,000 Iraqis were outnumbered by the 43,000,000 Iranians; but with the weapons we supplied him, Saddam Hussein fought the Iranians to a stalemate. Millions were killed and wounded.
In the first Gulf War hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Kuwaitis were sacrificed by Saddam Hussein. The United Nations Coalition failed to consummate their victory over Saddam Hussein.
General Douglas MacArthur said it best: "There is no substitute for victory."
We naively thought that the Iraqis would rise up and depose their evil dictator. The majority of Iraq's provinces, with our encouragement, did revolt. However, the United Nations and the United States left these people without the needed military support, and Saddam Hussein annihilated them by the tens of thousands. Thousands of them were killed by poison gas.
Perhaps the most ironic twist in this whole affair is that Jimmy Carter was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
I agree with your point, and I don't mean to detract from it with my comments.
But the Shaw of Iran is often held up by the left as an example of what goes wrong in the mideast when we give carte blanche to client dictators in defense of our national interests. Of course the left even goes so far as to say that religious extremism itself would be casued by the terrible suffering the Shaw caused.
War is hell, and we already know the left will do anything it can to deny its necessity.
Many on the left today don't understand the bitter flareups that were the reality of the Cold War. They blame the heinous suffering on the battle-scarred Cold Warriors, their client dictators, and our supporting troops both clandestine and conventional.
Of course the left never addresses the fact that the communists brought conflict to the regions in question. It's their deeply held belief in Marxist ideology that ties them to acceptance of "armed economic struggle." There's never a hint of encouragement for free markets as a solution for poverty.
The force of maniacal communist expansion had to be stopped with whatever means necessary.
We supplied him with a massive arms buildup, which apparently included chemical, and perhaps even biological, weapons.
... is an absolute lie. We supplied Saddam with intelligence during the Iran-Iraq war and bought his oil. That was the extent of the relationship.
He got his weapons on the free market, mostly from Russian sources, with the money he made from oil sales. His chems and bios were homegrown for the most part. Iraq had the second-most advanced biological program in the world, after the USSR.
Can't anybody get this straight?
We did NOT supply Saddam with WEAPONS. Yes, we did give him some intelligence about those calling us "the Great Satan." Weapons?---No.
That data is from SIPRI, as indicated in the chart notes.
Very interesting. I consider myself an existentialist, and this (to me) points out the error in Carter's ways: he wanted perfection, and he got something much worse. If he could have faced the real implications of his choices, he would have worked with the Shaw to reform that rule instead of letting it fall. The existentialist would have accepted the Shaw's flaws or would have found a humane solution equally or better suited to American interests.
Of course the Shaw was dying, but wouldn't that have been an opportunity to replace him with a successor who could have renewed efforts to bring peace to the country?
One question: were any of the 100,000 deaths per year your Iranian friend mentions related to the Iran-Iraq war? As far as I know, this war was started by Saddam and tolerated by the USA because we wanted to limit Iran's Islamic revolution. The Iranian tactics were characteristic of suicide warfare, and they would even use children to clear minefields.
I don't recall anyone accusing Jimmy Carter of being a crook.
Yes, he is politically my adversary, and he might be lusting for worldly recognition by getting involved in losing crusades.
Nevertheless, the only person I know who met Carter while he was Georgia governor told me that Carter was a nice guy. Maybe Carter has changed since then.
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