But yeah, your comment reminds me that we’re probably never getting all that close to a full story when we turn to any sort of reportage on what’s happening in “the Middle East.” For us as individual citizens, we can’t help but be in the dark about much of it. I do feel confident in believing though that most of the people from my country over there shouldn’t be there, because they’re not acting in the interests of the people who live there. A simple point I suppose, but so few USians seem able or willing to keep it in mind.
Does no one remember the MAIN point of the 9/11 commission report? They were at war with us, we weren’t at war with them. That the Iranian Theocratic Government hates the US is NOT new. To think it is is the worst kind of ignorance
Just a not of clarity here, Hezbollah is not Iran. Full stop. Are they aligned with Iran? Yes, because Iran supports them, but Hezbollah has it’s own goals and has agency.
Let’s not fall into that old right wing trap of assuming “they” are all the same damn thing, as they are not. The middle east is a complicated place, with a complicated history just over the 20th century, I know, but there are plenty of very smart people who have written tons of books on this stuff, so let’s not ignore them and what they tell us about the various actors in the region.
First, the Iranians had nothing to do with 9/11. There is no evidence of that, as it says in the 9/11 report.
Second, WE OVER THREW THEIR GOVERNMENT IN 1953. If any one “started” these tensions, it was most certainly the United States. There is a direct historical line between that event and where we are in our relations with the Iranians.
Given the broad criteria I’m mildly surprised they left out the the first Klan guerilla campaign, the Pullman Strike, the Irish War of Independence, the American Volunteer Group, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Little Rock Crisis, the Summer of Rage, the LA Riots, and the USS Cole. If they treated WWII the way they treated Vietnam instead of a single conflict it would be at least three wars against three different belligerant states.
9/11 was committed by Sunni terrorists, Iran is Shia. It’s like blaming the Catholics for the KKK. Just because they’re all brown doesn’t mean they’re the same.
It is said that some IS leaders were former Ba’athist intelligence and military officers who realised that if they wanted to get back into power Islamic fundamentalism of some kind was now the only game in town. They formed an alliance of convenience with true believers from Al Qa’eda and used their professional skills to develop IS’s armed forces and intelligence apparatus.
Given that the military uses up around 15-20% of the US economy, the so-called bastion of capitalism is better described as a centrally planned war economy.
To keep such an economy going and successful (for those who benefit) you have blow stuff up. If you don’t drop the bombs and fire the missiles you don’t need to build and buy more of them. If you don’t have massive carrier groups going to trouble spots around the world, you don’t need the massive carrier groups. Of course you also need to fetishize the military, which is definitely a thing in the US.
So the US needs a shooting war every so often, and even better a forever war like Iraq and Afghanistan have become.
Of course, the actual military is far less eager to be thrown into pointless, bloody quagmires for dubious profit. Not that it helps much, as long as too many Americans are willing to vote for Republicans. (Yes, I’m very much aware that Democrats aren’t exactly doves, either. But they tend to have actual plans and aims in mind, when using armed forces, and are nowhere near as preoccupied by “looking tough” and avenging generation-old humiliations as the GOP and their voters.)
No, but we can keep our focus on the biggest problem here. We don’t need to paint anyone as a pure, innocent victim to say that Trump is out of control and fucking dangerous, and that the policy of presenting an extreme option to make others look more palatable (which is systemic and predates Trump) is pretty much guaranteed to lead to fuckups like this.
