Random Pics from Washington March 09/12/09

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by August

It pulled us out of the post vietnam era funk.

As far as history is concerned for the United States, there was no real "Post-Vietnam Era". The Vietnam War ended in 1975 according to Gerald Ford. Since it was part of the United States' effort against Communism in the Cold War, that's the timeline era it would fall under. And the Cold War didn't end until the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

Originally Posted by August

It got Jimmy Carter out of the oval office before he could do more damage.
It got Ronald Reagan into office.

Not the fuel shortage problems and Soviet's invading Afghanistan- when the United States supported the Mujaheddin? Not John Anderson's attempt at the presidency which got him 6% of the popular vote? Not the other independents who ran and took votes from Carter? Not his period of stagflation with other nations?

Carter did not lose for one reason. You and I both know politics is too complicated to allow something like that to happen. There are many things that decides who will be victorious, some larger than others. And with that said, comparing with other issues the United States had at the time he was president, the Iranian Hostage Crisis was hardly the biggest one to hit him- most vocally so when you consider things like the Soviets trying to push into and take over the Middle East and Carter's reaction to it.

Originally Posted by August

It made enemies of our two nations.

And now when Obama wants to repair it and Ahmadinejad and the clergy are willing to have it repaired, the Republican Party on a whole and some of the Democrats are saying that we shouldn't even bother because of some stupid incident that happened 30 years ago which didn't start a war between either one of us, or cause either one of us to commit terrorist acts against the other, or even cause anyone to die (no seriously, none of the hostages died and none of the Iranians died; Carter did fulfill one promise it seems).

Originally Posted by August

The effects of these things are still being felt and will continue for a long time.

But did any of these effects include a massive revolution for you all that changed your government style completely? Did anyone die as a result of this? How about a war afterwards which got over a million people killed? Did that ever happen?

No. None of these things happened to the United States as a result of the end of Vietnam or Cold War, Jimmy Carter losing the election to Reagan, or relations between the United States and Iran deteriorating. But they did to Iran as a result of the United States couping Dr. Mossadegh and placing a tyrannical monarch in power. And you did it because of greed.

Originally Posted by August

As for your previous posts: Dance around the subject all you want but calling for someones lynching just isn't funny.

What subject are we talking about here? The CSA flag image or Iranian-American history and relations? Because I addressed both quite clearly. Which reminds me, you still haven't explained why that flag is there.

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

Things weren't exactly rosy during your authoritarian Monarch period in your country.

Yeah no kidding.

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

I think Iranians didn't exactly do much to make their country a stable and wonderful place for all it's citizens before US policy there.

Because we couldn't. Because the Pahlavis had a tremendous amount of power over us. The monarchs always did. They had the Imperial Guard watching their backs at all times, half the regulars were loyal to them, and the citizens themselves had nothing to fight with.

The coup the put Mossadegh in power was a great thing. But then they couped a second time and put the Pahlavis back on the throne. We wanted democracy and for a time we had it, but then it was taken away from us and that was a huge setback and major historical event.

Now I don't know how many of us deserted from the regular army when the Islamic Revolution began, but I know it was a lot of us. And I also know that if any revolution had happened any earlier, there would have been a lot fewer deserting to join the rebellion. And for the time, we were using powerful stuff. Most of it we got from the Soviets and turned out to be total crap when we actually used it against the Iraqis, but against ill-equipped and poorly trained militias I assume it would get the job done.

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

What responsibility do Iranians have for their own role in the ruination of your country?

And as far as the blunder in allowing the Islamic Revolution to take place in Iran, you can thank the impotent Jimmy Carter administration and the Democrats of the time. You know, the very people you vote for in my country. You can thank people like yourself for Iran's dismal failure in two different ways.

Making it a theocracy run by Islamic clergymen. That certainly didn't help our situation in the slightest, but we could have avoided that in the first place if Mossadegh hadn't been overthrown. The majority of the people loved him, saw him as a hero who put his principles above any personal gain.

Well that fact never made me a fan of Carter, but it still angers me more than anything that Eisenhower and Churchill couped us after Mossadegh had gotten in power. We never would have had a revolution after that. Not saying the prospect would be an impossibility, but it certainly would be very unlikely. That's one of the reasons I liked Truman: he refused to meddle in our oil affairs.

Furthermore, Reagan and the Republicans would not have been any better of a choice. Yeah, they guaranteed us independence and shipped us some ammunition and weapons, but they counted on Iraq winning in the long run. That's why they dedicated most of their support to the Iraqis by shipping mustard and chlorine gas to them, by helping to train their soldiers, and by shipping weapons and ammunition to them. And the Soviets weren't much better, but the only reason they were helping us more than Iraq was because the Iraqis supported the United States over them.

I can thank both sides for messing Iran up. Neither one of them are saintly, which is precisely why I don't bother vouching for one or the other. They're both in it for their own personal ends. Nobody should kid themself about that.

Originally Posted by Sea Demon

August is right regarding your views between the Rebel Flag and the Iranian flag in your sig. You're just spinning because you can't do an adequate job of explaining it away.

Spinning would be me trying to bridge a comparison between the two, and that's not what I'm doing. So no, I am not "spinning" anything.

What is there to explain? The flag of the CSA is in the pic, it's got no belonging at an anti-Obama/government rally (maybe at some sort of Civil War-related rally, but that's not what this is), and it's quite easy to infer that it's there to demonstrate either racist and unsupportive feelings for having a black president (that's always been the original usage of it; check out the KKK rallies sometime- they're never short on Stainless Banners) or to inspire a rebellious sense of attitude among the crowd.