I've copied it, and will keep it for further review. But even with my limited knowledge, I know your right on!!
I had one recurring thought while reading it. I would pose a question to the Palestinians, Iranians, to the Iraqis, Turks and Egyptians and "all" living in that part of the World.. "Are you better off today after all this turmoil?"
I don't think they are better off after losing the Shah (I'm very open minded to understanding it better though!). I don't think Afganistan is better off either. Nor for that matter the Balkans, or Indonesia. So many places that for all their turmoil, seem poorer. Destroyed.
I can't help but wonder if many don't wish it was the "way it used to be".
I know there were leaders who hogged the wealth, and the people felt robbed. But now they are poorer. They don't even have homes. Or the ones they do are shambles. They lose loved ones in constant battle. What FREEDOMS did they gain?? I look at the devastation and it just boggles my mind. I look at the faces of parents as they bury their children, grown and young children,..and I'm just so frustrated. To what "end" do they continue to fight? To what "Noble Cause" are they sacrificing such a precious thing?
If I lose my child or my grandchild because a race of people are being tortured, are suffering or dying, that would be one thing. But for riches? For land? And if they lose their children because of persecution, or torture, if they lost them because they were not free to practice their religious beliefs.. then when they had the ability, when they had the monies, why didn't they defend themselves? I'm constantly wondering "how did they get where they are today?" Then we tried to help, and they hate us? Someone help me understand that mindset!!
All I'll say is, I'll take America any day!!! I love our diversity, our Religious Freedoms. That we enjoy such a bounty of religious beliefs in NO WAY threatens my/our belief system. It enriches it, because I know I'm free to believe whatever way I want. It enriches us as Americans. I'm so thankful to live in such Freedom!!! We are well aware of the sacrifices of our Childrens lives, of our fellow Veterans lives, that has ensured that Freedom. Even when the political turmoil is explained as well as you just explained it, I'm left with a lingering question mark on the whole thing.. WHY??
Just "food for thought". Again, thanks for a thoughtful intelligent post. We all need to understand the history of that Region. Now if I could just truly understand the "decisions" of the people in that region of the World.
In closing I will say that America has stood beside those who felt oppressed. We may not have always got it right, we may not have supported the right people in hindsight, but at the time, the political ideologies we supported seemed like the most prudent. So no, we didn't always get it right and most likely will get it wrong again one day. But we have tried to help oppressed people who were suffering, who were tortured. I can't help but wonder what an intelligent person would have us do different????
.... after all, we sacrificed our sons and daughters for the sake of others. (John 15:13) I happen to feel that was Noble and honorable.
In truth, I have wondered a LOT of late, if those precious lives were worth it, with all the rhetoric coming from ungrateful Nations. This situation is different now, now we are defending our own.
But I don't think I will ever forget the Kurdish man holding his little girl and sharing her fate in death, nor do I regret our defense of them. How could we not help?
How could we not be against Hitler?? How can we ever get the images of innocent women/children and men being tortured and killed by an inhumane Taliban?? Whom we believe KILLED INNOCENT CHILDREN, WOMEN AND MEN OF THE UNITED STATES by aiding Osamma Bin Laden. As did Iraq in our opinion, and we may find out just how deeply they were involved one day!! If they supported the Terrorist "in any way",.. they are just as guilty.
Anyway,..thanks again! I hope people will take the time to read your post. It IS complex,.. but with a lot of thought, we can understand better what is happening. With a LOT of thought, we understand the complex issues facing our Nation today.
What you and I see as the fruits of peace, they think are the fruits of victory. What we see as the fruits of justice, they expect only from oppression, for the benefit of the oppressors. What we know comes from hard work, they think comes from trickery. They think of us as victorious oppressors constantly engaged in trickery, and they think such is the secret of our success. When they react to calamity all around them by furious violence, they think they are pushing for a victory somewhere. When they see the misery caused by tyranny and torture, they see safety only in becoming the tyrants and torturers, instead of the tyrannized and tortured. When we pay them oodles of cash for their oil, they think it must be some kind of trick, and that we are exploiting their natural resources.
The wildest conspiracy theories are constructed, when necessary, to make whatever happens fit into categories like those, and to avoid anything that appears the opposite. I realize when all rolled together into that depressing a litany, it can seem as incomprehensible as where you started. And it is not true of all, obviously. But more people than you can imagine really believe that is just what the real world is like.
There are two main classes of reason for this. One is simpler and more basic, and lies behind that ingraditude you sense. In the overall scheme of things, it is a human weakness that provides fertile soil for the other class of reasons, which I will get to. But first this basic one. It is psychological, a species of wounded pride.
It is easier to admit they have just lost important fights, than to admit their hatred and endless fighting with one another has destroyed the lives of their children. Think about it. A defeated man can dream of victory. A man who knows his own vices have wrecked what he most cares for, feels himself to be a worm. It is easier to admit a clever sharper has fooled him - which after all is mostly the sharper's fault, his greed - than it is to admit he has wasted his time in fruitless pursuits and failed schemes. It is easier to call the punishments he has felt, injustice than to call them justice. Any fine upstanding fellow may suffer injustice. But only criminals are punished justly.
All of that is in human nature. You or I can be as susceptible to it as the next man. We may know these things to be moral errors, and may manage to avoid them. But we are exposed to making them, because we are merely human. It is a frailty more than an evil, although certainly it can result in folly and injustice. This sort of cause is merely fertile ground for the second sort, which is far worse in my estimation. The second cause is deliberate, done by some men to others, on purpose, for the ends of the first.
Remember that we have been involved in a century long struggle for dominion of the earth with some very nasty people driven by very twisted ideas. The cold war, and before it the period of the world wars, spread the vapors of that struggle over the entire world. And our enemies in those struggles were men who would say anything and do anything to make trouble for us. They were armed ambassadors of cynicism.
You or I, here in this country, can look back on that long struggle and remember that we knew we were on the right side, that we acted nobly on behalf of the good of all mankind, and that we were confident right through it that we would win through in the end. We know such things in our bones, despite moments of wavering and despite some domestic forces that lacked that faith. But all of that is not how the whole thing was experienced in much of the rest of the world.
Armies went forth and proclaimed that our prosperity was not a result of peace but of successful war. They taught wherever they could that our trade was not mutually beneficial but exploited and oppressed the wretched of the earth. They made out every intervention on the side of the threatened or downtrodden, a cynical imperial adventure serving the greed of wealthy corporations. And the average person somewhere between the power blocs, did not know which of the stories to believe. Some of them may have listened to native charity, or may have been encouraged by actions we took that directly brought benefit. But others beside them listened to the whispers of their wounded pride, and believe the cynical story their egos wanted to believe.
This did not all magically go away when a wall fell in 1989. Hundreds of millions of people had been evangalized by a bottomless cynicism, and plied with a thousand tales of our wrongdoing. The spiritual results of the catacylsms of the last century have scarcely begun to heal. And along the way, a thousand little wannabees have dreamt of themselves as the next tyrant to rise by the arts of propaganda and civil war. They are still out there, like boys from Brazil. We are still mopping up the spiritual mess made by a general political crisis, which raged for a lifetime in the last century.
I hope this helps make some sense of the attitudes you rightly detect.