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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (215260)	1/18/2005 1:48:36 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574683

However, if you decide to wage one, then you have to wage it to win. To win, we need to make it clear that we may lose in the Middle East, but the people in power today will lose their power as well. That is the only language these type of power hungry people understand. Saddam may gloat that we're losing in Iraq, but he will never again hold power. If we make the same threat to Bashar Assad and to Khomenie, they might take us seriously. They will only take us seriously after we have flouted their sovereignty and attacked them inside their own countries, just as they are flouting Iraq's sovereignty and supporting the insurgency within it. This is not meant to embarrass you but the Ayatollah Khomeini has been dead for over 15 years and Bashar Assad is a great improvement over his father. The current ayatollahs are not as conservative as Khomeini. Iran has begun to liberalize albeit slowly. The new president is a liberal. While not having great power, he has the support of the people esp. the younger Iranians. Democracy is further along in Iran than it ever was and is in Iraq. Iran is churning out more women MDs and lawyers than any other nation in the ME. Given time, Iran could well become a full fledged democracy with theocratic overtones and with a solid middle class. The current animosity the Iranians have for the US did not come out of the blue. It is founded in good reason. Forty years ago, we supported the Shah who was a tyrant that gave little to his people and treated them badly. Then when the people overthrew the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, we opposed him. During the Iraqi/Iranian war, we actively supported Saddam by providing aid and military equipment to be used against the Iranians. Many thousands of Iranians died in that war and near the end, Iran was reduced to sending teenagers to fight on the front lines. We worried that Iran was becoming too powerful and established an embargo of their ships. It is during that time that hate of all things American took root in Iran. Most Americans know little of the covert role we have played in the ME. They see Iran as the bad guy and do not understand the Iranian attitude towards the US. As for Bashar Assad, he is more liberal than his father and more enlightened........he is not the tyrant his father was. Syria actively helped us in our fight with al Qaida until we invaded Iraq. There was a chance that Bashar would have been more democratic than his father. Both Syria and Iran were opportunities that have been lost due Bush's inability to master the art of foreign diplomacy. If we really wanted peace and democracy in the ME, we would not have behaved as we have during the past 4 years. So its safe to assume that its not peace and democracy in the ME that we are after. ted