http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/05/protected.terrorists/index.html

Iran has plenty of things they deserve blame for, but we can't seem to stop squandering opportunities and driving wedges between our two countries.

That, and we never seem to learn our lesson about supporting bad guys who just happen to be against other bad guys we don't like.

4/13/2007 1:18:35 PM

the government is one big giant contradiction

Quote :

"we never seem to learn our lesson about supporting bad guys who just happen to be against other bad guys we don't like"

and probably never will

4/13/2007 1:32:59 PM

hahahah this is almost comical. Shortsighted pragmatism FTW!

4/13/2007 1:45:30 PM

US puts them in power in Iran one day.
They do US's bidding for a while.
One day, they stand up and say "No" to US.
That pisses off Americans and they try to dismantle them covertly, killing a bunch of civilians.
That pisses off the MEK and terrorist attacks against US/Americans take place.

Enter John and Jane Doe:

Why do they hate us...? They are terrorists... they killed white American people. We are such good people... we never harmed anybody.

Enter then-President of US:

I have declared military striked against Iran today for their terrorist attack a month ago killing 12 Americans in Jordan.

*******************************************************************

Of course, the main problem here is the millions of John and Jane Does who have no idea of the past 30-year dirty history of the US.

4/13/2007 2:23:13 PM

yeah that is pretty bullshit, that we harbor terrorist when it is in our "interest". This kind of reminds me of the stink a couple years back when the issue came out that we harbored in the US a group known to be terrorists in Cuba.

4/13/2007 2:38:07 PM

sadly, such things are done in the best interests of this country. and honestly, i know very little of any of it, certainly very little of what it really takes to keep america #1 in the world and as secure as we are. maybe it's really necessary

4/13/2007 2:40:18 PM

the terrorist hate us for our freedom

4/13/2007 2:41:25 PM

^^ oh, so it is not about liberating other people from evil dictators and giving them freedom and democracy????

4/13/2007 2:45:45 PM

This is bad news. I understand their strategic importance, but this could easily turn around and bite us in the ass like the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Or if you want another example: Hamas was initially supported by the Israeli intelligence services as a way to counter PLO influence. We see what that little investment bought them today.

4/13/2007 2:46:35 PM

Quote :

"^^ oh, so it is not about liberating other people from evil dictators and giving them freedom and democracy????"

maybe sometimes. or maybe all the time but only as a partial reason

4/13/2007 2:52:14 PM

Ah,

The good ole' days of US foreign policy

4/13/2007 3:00:06 PM

The trend of the current generation summed up:

insert "turrist" where "commie" appeared 50 years ago.

4/13/2007 3:03:49 PM

even besides the idiocy of supporting shitheads who oppose other shitheads, but could (and prob eventually will) cost us in the long run, and the fact that it does immediate damage to our claiming moral high ground, there's the issue of fucking things up further between us and Iran...

I'm not trying to paint a blameless picture of Iran by any means--don't get me wrong...they're a fucked up regime who repeatedly does idiotic things that needlessly provoke us (and lots of other countries). HOWEVER, if you read between the lines sometimes, they've given us several opportunities to establish at least a working relationship with them, particularly over the last 5-7 years. I'm not saying that we've missed opportunities to make them our #1 ally, or that they haven't fucked the dog in their dealings with us several times in the same period, but we have squandered opportunities and needlessly aggravated the situation several times through our own boneheaded foreign policies in the last several years, too.



and that's coming from the point of view of someone who is fairly hawkish, America-#1, if you poke me I will fucking kill you, etc.

[Edited on April 13, 2007 at 4:44 PM. Reason : asdfasd]

4/13/2007 4:39:10 PM

hopefully the intelligence they're giving us on Iran is some pretty damn important intelligence

4/13/2007 4:43:14 PM

Quote :

"RedGuard: This is bad news. I understand their strategic importance, but this could easily turn around and bite us in the ass like the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Or if you want another example: Hamas was initially supported by the Israeli intelligence services as a way to counter PLO influence. We see what that little investment bought them today."

Indeed. Disastrous hypotheticals are easy to come by when it comes to withdrawal from Iraq, but apparently absent when it comes to our foreign policy mongering. Even in the post-9/11 era, unfortunately.

4/13/2007 7:15:36 PM

too bad Ron Paul will never get elected


I don't think it would hurt us to step back as a country and look at the things we meddle in and organize our priorities


constantly flip flopping and changing leaders (by force) of other countries is not helping us gain any friends

4/13/2007 7:53:48 PM

haha this reminds me of all those threads like "100 reasons to hate america"

[Edited on April 13, 2007 at 8:36 PM. Reason : and the fake dead babies ]

4/13/2007 8:34:15 PM

Americans, with our dis-interest in history, are too impatient, too emotional, too opportunistic and too powerful to meddle very effectively in foreign intrigue.

4/13/2007 11:09:01 PM

Quote :

"Of course, the main problem here is the millions of John and Jane Does who have no idea of the past 30-year dirty history of the US."

Yeah, the whole history of Iran thing (which I learned from a British comedian's perspective, not the best source to be sure, still informative once you take out the bias...and intentional humor) is very interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Ecd6361Ls

Quick synopsis:
-After World War I, Britain took over present-day Middle East and Iran as colonies from the Ottoman Empire, which was a member of the German/Austrian-Hungarian allies.
-Britain discovered oil, and a contract was given to what is called today British Petroleum.
-In 1951, an Iranian was elected Prime Minister on the promise of nationalizing the country's oil production (he was somewhat of a socialist).
-British Foreign Office (with monetary support from Churchill and supported also by Eisenhower) agrees to carry out a coup.
-American support came on the condition that it would be operated by Teddy Roosevlelt's grandson Kermit Roosevelt, CIA's Middle East chief in Tehran.
-Roosevelt selects an Iranian general in jail to lead the coup. He was jailed for being a Hitler sympathizer. This man became the Shah. Iran's democracy lasted til 1953 when the Shah came into power as dictator.
-The Shah would eliminate all political opponents, except religious ones (Muslim fundamentalists), because he did not want the masses to rise against him on the basis of religion. So people that were mad at how the Shah was running the country only had the mosque as an escape valve to vent their hatred.
-This naturally leads to increasing radicalism. In 1979, our country starts to pay attention to the country as the Ayatollah comes to power, overthrows the Shah, and imprisons Americans for over a year. We get pissed, Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam, and Saddam invades Iran for an eight-year war that ends in an expensive stalemate.

He also managed to explain the Iraq War in terms of a Bronx crack dealer, which regardless of your view is pretty funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HcEgntmBL0

[Edited on April 13, 2007 at 11:16 PM. Reason : .]

4/13/2007 11:09:10 PM

Quote :

"we never seem to learn our lesson about supporting bad guys who just happen to be against other bad guys we don't like"

kind of like deciding between Bush or Kerry in '04

Quote :

"Americans, with our dis-interest in history, are too impatient, too emotional, too opportunistic and too powerful to meddle very effectively in foreign intrigue. "

yeah, so instead, we meddle disastrously in it

4/14/2007 12:43:17 AM

Arrogance and Incompetence generally makes bad Foriegn Policy.

4/14/2007 12:57:57 AM

Quote :

"This naturally leads to increasing radicalism. In 1979, our country starts to pay attention to the country as the Ayatollah comes to power, overthrows the Shah, and imprisons Americans for over a year. We get pissed, Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam, and Saddam invades Iran for an eight-year war that ends in an expensive stalemate."

Do you actually believe that the US instigated Iraq to attack Iran?

The US has done a lot of stupid shit, but the first Gulf War(Iran-Iraq War) was all them.

4/14/2007 11:21:23 AM

Whether they instigated it has been disputed, and I honestly don't know enough about it to say for myself one way or the other, but we absolutely aided and encouraged them once it started.

4/14/2007 12:29:52 PM

We only started to aid the Iraqis after the Iranians started to win and push the Iraqis back across the border. We didn't want the Iranians taking over Iraqi oil fields (or choking off Iraqi ports, which was the immediate threat). Even then US support was relatively minimal. Funny enough, Kuwait actually was one of the primary financial supporters (whoops).

And the British never took over Iran as a colony! How could they take of Iran from the Ottomans if the Ottomans never controlled Iran?

[Edited on April 14, 2007 at 2:01 PM. Reason : sp]

4/14/2007 2:00:19 PM

Quote :

"Even then US support was relatively minimal"

you mean like giving them chemical weapons and telling them where to drop them? yup... very minimal. and no international laws on war conduct broken either. very human too.

4/14/2007 2:16:48 PM

Proof? Oh wait.. you don't have to have that to bash the US. My mistake.

4/14/2007 2:21:39 PM

if you don't know the WELL KNOWN fact that chemical weapons were supplied to saddam during the war, which were used on iranians and the US [obviously] turned a blind eye to that fact, YOU are the one living under a rock, and it is your responsibility to look it up.

had i presented some kooky conspiracy theory, then the burden of proof would be on me.

but since everybody knows this, the burden is on you to llok it up. (and how come you don't know? oh wait, you are just one of the tens hundreds of millions of John Does)

4/14/2007 2:25:36 PM

Quote :

"chemical weapons were supplied to saddam during the war, which were used on iranians and the US [obviously] turned a blind eye to that fact"

or

Quote :

"giving them chemical weapons and telling them where to drop them?"

Which is it? Did we supply Iraq with chemical weapons and tell them how to use them or did we turn a blind eye to their use? Two very different things. Yes, the US did turn a blind eye to their use, but the US did not supply them nor did we assist in their deployment.

4/14/2007 2:33:35 PM

^ the thing different between the two is telling them where to drop them vs turning a blind eye.

the MAIN FACT, that they were supplied with the chemical weapons by the US, is common to both of those quotes, and that IS true.

and if you don't know that (that they were supplied by the US), you truly are ignorant of that affair.

4/14/2007 3:14:43 PM

More like "Mujahedeen-e-Khalq makes deal with terrorist nation"

The U.S. will do anything and I mean ANYTHING to gain advantage and the whole world knows it.

Do you really want to be part of something like that?

4/17/2007 8:17:50 PM