Ok - the question was raised last month (if I remember correctly) about Jimmy Carter. At the time I said he was the main reason why we have the problems in the Middle East (M.E.) we have today. Lets take a gander into why I believe that.
Lets look at the current trouble spots in the M.E. (the French call it the Levant). Lebanon... Gaza... West Bank ... Iraq ... Syria. If you look closely, what country has a hand in each one being as much trouble as they are? One guess... Please? One tiny guess... Ok give up??
The answer is
IRAN !!!
Yes, thats right ... I-R-A-N !!!
"Now Thai", you tell me, " Iran can't possibly be the puppeteer could it".
Yes... it can and it is.
Iran is providing materiel support (rockets, guns) and funding to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
As for Gaza, in the story below it reveals that Iran has ties with Hamas.
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20061227-082153-2822r
Note the last paragraph [emphasis mine];
Conversely, Iran is honing its retaliatory capabilities. Several hundred Hamas operatives recently left Gaza for Iran for special training by Revolutionary Guards, according to Israeli intelligence. Iran has also re-equipped Hezbollah in Lebanon with thousands of missiles and rockets to replace those fired at Israeli targets for 34 days last summer.
Same with the West Bank and Syria is in Iran's back pocket as everyone knows.
As for Iraq, Iran is providing funding and training for the groups fomenting the violence and continues to do so in an effort to fight a proxy war against us and sap our nation's will (think of what we did to the Soviets in Afghanistan in the Cold War )
"But Thai", you say, "Even if true, Iran is governed by a bunch of fanatical Shiite rulers who have always been against us."
To that I say...
NOT TRUE !!!
Iran was our ALLY for over 30 years before the revolution came in the late 70's. I'm going to let that sink in again and in case anyone missed it I'll say it again.
Iran
was
our
ALLY !!!
There was probably no bigger U.S. supporter in the Middle East than the Shah. And Jimmy Carter basically pissed on him when it counted and pissed away an extremely valuable ally and quite possibly doomed the rest of the Middle East in the process.
Remember that during the Cold War, we had Israel, Turkey and Iran as pro-Western M.E. countries that joined us as "listening posts" and bulwarks against the growing threat of the Soviet Empire.
The Shah was a loyal American friend and was trying to modernize his country. Was he entirely "clean" as a ruler? No. M.E. countries to this very day display an affinity for a "strongman" to run them. He was, in the words of, former Sec. of State, Alexander Haig more of an;
"essentially benevolent despot who was a good friend of the United States, an implacable enemy of the Left and an obstacle to the religious right."
Carter was offended that the Shah's governance didn't look exactly like America's so threatened to cut off aid to Iran unless the Shah went through with certain "reforms"., These reforms led to an impression that he was "weak". And in the M.E. you do not want to be perceived as the "weak horse". So what did militant religious leaders and students, who were offended by the Shah's push to modernize, do? They plotted a revolution.
Now this revolution erupted when the Shah came to the U.S. to visit and while he was here the revolution could've still been put down by the Shah's government. Carter told the Shah to basically "do nothing" and so he did just that. His reasoning was that the "American government has never let us down" and he had no reason to believe it would this time either.
The Shah made one crucial mistake... he trusted Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter did what he always did when confronted with evil... NOTHING !!!
He stated that this was a problem " for the Iranians to decide" and that it had nothing to do with the U.S. He basically believed that there was no difference in the way the Shah ran the country and the way this new rabble threatened to run it. Even though the revolution's sponsors quickly shouted that they would "export the revolution to the four reaches of the earth". We immediately "recognized" the new militant government in the most shameless display of appeasement in my lifetime.
What happened then? Anyone know??
That's right... we were rebuffed by the new revolutionaries as former "friends of the Shah".
In fact, quite alot of people in Iran were executed as former friends and government workers
Instead what happened was that the Ayatollah Komeini came to power and his son then took over our embassy. We then had the indignity of watching our soldiers and embassy personnel being paraded, blindfolded, in front of the TV cameras.
So what the Carter administration perceived as purely an "Iranian" matter, the rest of the world saw as a U.S. defeat (anyone see shades of this today in Iraq with Dems saying this is purely an Iraqi matter now and the Repubs saying that if we leave now we will be seen as defeated?).
Later the Ayatollah would expound that he had expected the U.S. to militarily come to the aid of the Shah and help the Iranian military and government tamp out the revolution. When that initial fear had passed and Carter blinked, the Ayatollah proclaim that "American can do nothing to us". That same thinking stayed with Iran's leadership and is still on display today.
Reagan said it best when he said this;
"Our government's decision to piously stand by while he [the Shah] was forced from office led to the establishment of a despotic regime in Tehran that was far more evil and far more tyrranical than the one it replaced. And as I was to learn through personal experience, it left a legacy of problems that would haunr our country for years to come"
I can go on and on about how this lead to Iraq declaring war on Iran and how the West supported Iraq in its war on Iran in the 80's, but that wouldn't leave more stories for next time would it?
Suffice to say... the Appeaser-in-Chief... Mr. Jimmy Carter... is quite possibly one of our worst presidents. We went from having a strong moderate ally in the M.E. to that country being a hostile, anti-American supporter of terrorism (in fact it is THE chief supporter of terrorism). All because Jimmy did nothing. Remember, appeasement isn't just a one-time thing. It doesn't just happen and then everyone forgets about it after you've gone from the world stage. It stays with people and causes more problems as it rolls on. Think of the harmless little snowball as it rolls down the mountain of snow. As it keeps rolling it gathers more mass and speed and eventually is a juggernaut too big to stop.
When all one had to do at the beginning was smash it with your boot.
Too bad that Carter's idea of a proper foreign policy response (the "boot") to an invasion of one country (Afghanistan) by another ( the Soviet Union) was to boycott the Olympics.
BTW- this is all for now and I'll have more on Jimmy in the coming weeks. I will be getting into how an ex-president should and should not act and how his "outreach" and "peace efforts" always seem to favor Arabic countries and why that is (think - financial reasons). And of course his lovely deal he worked out with the N. Koreans in the 90's so that they would give up nukes.
That sure worked out well.
Way to go Jimmy !!!
P.S. - my next post is on Global Warming and then the one after that will deal with a bit of Hollywood "goings-on" (sorry Nazh, I just can't resist).
{no problem, I get lonely on here by myself-LN}
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{no problem, I get lonely on here by myself-LN}
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