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

To: Brumar89 who wrote (351294)	9/20/2007 6:00:00 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573813

The Shah was a good and progressive ruler. Maybe by the standards of the Middle East, or in comparison with Iran's present regime. Leaving aside those standards and your left with a more mixed record. He was a bit of a thug in some ways but that sort of goes with the nature of being a dictator. While he did repress his opposition, he (as you point out) did things to help the country. In that way he was sort of like Pinochet, even if the actions he took were not exactly the same.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (351294)	9/20/2007 6:39:52 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573813

You instinctively accept the most hostile (to America) opinions and parties as right and legitimate and bend over backward to side with them. On the contrary, I try to figure why we are so hated when so many Americans only want to do good by the world. Did you know we helped saved the PLO from destruction by Israel? Do you know that we forced through the UN the creation of Israel even after our ally, the Brits, told us it was a mistake? What do you think that did for the US image in Islam? Did you know when we sent troops to the Gulf in 1991, we did so in defense of Arab countries, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (sure it was in our interest, as it should be)? You answered your own statement. Do you think the Arabs see it any differently? Did you know we reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers and fought a brief naval war with Iran in the '80's to protect Arab shipping? We did it to help Saddam and try to get Iran to capitulate to him. Did you know we forced a ceasefire on Israel back in 1973 which prevented it from decisively defeating Egypt and Syria? Yes. Did you know we've been the primary financial backer of the PA? Not recently. Did you know we have done the most to try to make peace between Israel and its neighbors, including the Palestinians? Clinton did.......not Bush. A couple of Presidents have personally worked as negotiators to this goal. Bush I and Clinton. That was a good thing. Now we've overthrown a brutal dictator and given an Arab country a chance to rule itself democratically. We invaded another country for little good reason and violated its sovereignty. As a result, the country is in chaos. The Arab world has no legitimate greivances against us. Unfortunately, leftwingers are so anti-American they instinctively side with terrorists and anyone else anti-American so they can't accept this fact. You are fool if you believe that the Arab world has no legitimate grievances against the US. Just last summer we let Israel bomb the hell out of Lebanon. -------------------------------------- Islam considers all of Saudi Arabia to be holy ground. No it doesn't. If it did, SA wouldn't have had hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims working in the country for the last 50 years. Osama bin Ladin says all of Saudi Arabia is holy ground. Maybe you consider him the spokesman for Islam? Anyway, your acceptance of his claim is an example of the instinctive siding with terrorists and other extremist anti-American viewpoints I mentioned above. Their objection isn't foreigners.......its the military of another nation. ------------------------- Bingo! That's exactly the attitude that pisses people off and gets al Qaida on American backs. The Shah was a good and progressive ruler. He liberated women, promoted western education and economic development, redistributed land to small farmers from the mullah-dominated landholding class. But he was friendly to America, so the left demonized him and takes the side of people like Khomeini and Ahmadinejad. The Shah was an elitist, repressive dicator who tortured his people. Yes, he did do some westernization of the country but under his strong arm: "While a Muslim himself, the Shah gradually lost support with the Shi'a clergy of Iran, particularly due to his strong policy of Westernization and recognition of Israel. Clashes with the religious right, increased communist activity, Western interference in the economy, and a 1953 period of political disagreements with Mohammad Mossadegh (in which each side accused the other of staging a coup, eventually leading to Mossadegh's downfall) would cause an increasingly autocratic rule. Various controversial policies were enacted, including the banning of the Tudeh Party and the oppression of dissent by Iran's intelligence agency, SAVAK; Amnesty International reported that Iran had as many as 2,200 political prisoners in 1978. By 1979, the political unrest had transformed into a revolution which, on January 16, forced the Shah to leave Iran after 37 years of rule. Soon thereafter, the revolutionary forces transformed the government into an Islamic republic." en.wikipedia.org