Jan 10 2013

Both sides doo-doo it…

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

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Booman’s Burden:

The 1953 CIA-sponsored coup that put the Shah back in power in Iran, and the subsequent build-up of SAVAK, the Shah’s brutal internal security force, are certainly black marks in our Cold War history. But it’s not a simple story where we can know that things would have turned out so much better without our meddling. By 1979, Iran had modernized to a remarkable degree, certainly by the standards of the region, and a lot of that was because of American investment. Without submitting to the Hitler-built-good-roads mentality, we can admit that there were many positive consequences for the Iranian people of both the Shah’s reign, and America’s role in sustaining it. One of the tragedies of the Iranian Revolution is that it was taken over by religious fanatics who jettisoned the good along with the bad as far as America’s influence was concerned. On the progressive side, I think there is a constant frustration that the American people are never given the proper context to understand why the Iranian government and (to a degree) the Iranian people are hostile to our country, and especially its foreign policy. The temptation is to overcompensate in the opposite direction, portraying the U.S. as the bad guy and the Iranians as the justifiably aggrieved party.

This impasto of bullshit on blogboard reminds me of David Brooks’ Shit-Brown Period, conceptually AWOL and non-representational, yet physically and graphically present, as if someone had pooped into Duchamp’s signed urinal at the exhibit.

I suppose killing 500,000 Iraqi children with sanctions, or invading Iraq on multiple occasions, are also not “simple stories where we can know that things would have turned out so much better without our meddling,” but I’m guessing that nationalizing some of the world’s largest energy reserves would have turned out rather well indeed for the average Iranian in a world of energy deficits.

ON THE OTHER HAND!  Signature drone strikes on wedding parties and children carrying firewood obviously relieved them from the potential suffering of growing old and weary of the world and its people.

How’s that Grand Frog March going, buddy?  I’m sure history will say I have misunderestimated you.

6 comments

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  1. that we slog through daily in partisan politics, the frog pond has become the innerleckshool holler where it all drains.

    (I exempt Steven D from this assessment.)

    • TMC on January 14, 2013 at 06:17
    • #

    People’s Mujahedin of Iran

    The People’s Mujahedin of Iran or the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK, also PMOI, MKO) is a Iranian revolutionary organization that participated in the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi Shah. It has not been armed since 2003 and this has been acknowledged by several US military officials. After disarming, the Group accepted protection from the US military under the 4th Geneva Convention. It is now an opposition movement in exile, that advocates the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Founded on September 5, 1965 by a group of leftist Muslim Iranian university students as an Islamic and Marxist political mass movement, the MEK was originally devoted to armed struggle against the Shah of Iran, capitalism, and Western imperialism. In the immediate aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the MEK and the Tudeh Party at first chose to side with the clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini against the liberals, nationalists and other moderate forces within the revolution. A power struggle ensued, and by mid-1981, MEK was fighting street battles against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. During the Iran-Iraq War, the group was given refuge by Saddam Hussein and mounted attacks on Iran from within Iraqi territory.

    The group claims to have renounced violence in 2001 and today it is the main component organization of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an “umbrella coalition” calling itself the “parliament-in-exile dedicated to a democratic, secular and coalition government in Iran.” While the MEK’s leadership has resided in Paris France, the group’s core members were for many years confined to Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and “were disarmed in the wake of the US-led invasion and are said to have adhered to a ceasefire.”[11] The group’s remaining 3,200 members were recently compelled to move to ex-US military base Camp Liberty.[12] In January 2013, following the removal of MEK from Camp Ashraf, Sadeq al-Husseini, the deputy chairman of Diyala’s provincial council affirmed that several mass graves have been unearthed there. The MEK/NCRI is thought to have provided the United States with intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program in 2002 and 2008.

    Iraq and Iran designate the MEK as a terrorist organization. The European Union, Canada and the United States formerly listed the MEK as a terrorist organization, but this designation has since been lifted, first by the Council of the European Union in January 26, 2009 (following what the group called a “seven-year-long legal and political battle”), then by a decision by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on September 21, 2012 and lastly by a decision by a Canadian government on December 20, 2012.

    It is believed that they are working with the Israelis and had a hand in the assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists.  

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