Plus, the Shah was a "tyrant" because he imprisoned radical islamists [similar to what we are doing now in Cuba], and fought against Commis like the Mojahedin and the Tudah party similar to what we've always done.
Doesn't sound like much of a tyrant for those specific policies... whatsoever.
The Shah understood the danger the radical Islamists posed to modern society. Unfortunately it took the rest of the world another 25 years, and most people still haven't figured it out.
And our fine humanitarian president Carter was the one who helped depose the Shah, and hand Iran over to the Mullahs.
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=183
Carter also chastised the Shah of Iran for his human rights record and withdrew American support. This led to the U.S. losing a priceless pro-Western ally in the Middle East – an ally that was replaced by the deranged anti-Western Islamic theocracy of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
And let’s get one thing straight: yes, Somoza and the Shah were oppressive. But their regimes were like a Sunday school class in comparison to the ruthless dictatorships that took their place. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua by far surpassed their predecessor in human rights violations. The Khomeini theocracy, meanwhile, was a whole other story:
Khomeini killed more innocent Iranians (20,000) in a two-week reign of terror than the Shah could have even dreamed of killing throughout his 38 years in power (1941-1979).
Thanks to Carter, Iran’s pro-Western disposition was terminated and the rights that had been won for women in that country were reversed. Moreover, it was precisely because of the Iranian revolution that the Iran-Iraq war broke out – a war that took one million lives over its eight-year duration.
The Iran-Iraq nightmare led to the chaos in that region that yielded Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, which, in turn, led to the American war effort to get Iraq out of Kuwait. That necessary war effort, as we know, triggered an Islamic hatred of America that played a significant role in 9/11.
Let us also keep in mind that the Islamic revolution in Iran gave inspiration to tens of thousands of Islamic fanatics, who now began to conspire ever more fervently to destroy modernity in their own societies and to instigate terror against America and the West.
All this madness, and the tragedy that it drew for American strategic interests, was not the only consequence of Carter’s embarrassing naiveté in foreign policy. The Soviets saw him to be so gullible, weak and inept that they did not even hesitate to invade Afghanistan under his watch in 1979. Imagine the Soviets even contemplating invading Afghanistan under Reagan’s watch.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan also played a large role in nurturing the future Islamic terror that would so badly wound America. The Taliban, after all, were the backlash to the Soviet terror in Afghanistan. They took power in 1996 because they were strengthened by their rebellion against Soviet injustice.
Thus, when all is said and done, it is Jimmy Carter who helped pave the road to the rise of Islamic fanaticism and, therefore, to 9/11.
Funny how the folks who live with them and who know them (them = Jihadis) know exactly what to do with them. Only the Western socialist governments (including the US Democrat Party) don't have a clue.