Who?
She's a hit in England.
Posted on 10/26/2001 11:10:20 PM PDT by kattracks
This is just the weapon we need against the Taliban!
The HORROR, THE HORROR!
Actually Clinton could get lost in there!
No, no, it's not what you think, Izzy... < slap >
My he/she can weigh in here and give us some first stuff as I am sure he/she still has family and/or friends there.
Gee, did they go down the line and put flowers in the barrels of the guns?
But this has gradually been going on over the last ten years or so.
I have a very good friend who is Iranian, a woman engineer who I supervised several years ago. One day I walked into her office and saw that she was listening intently to the Farsi-language radio station here in Houston, as the announcer in an obviously excited tone rattled on nonstop. She told me that it was a call-in show, and they were discussing changes that were coming about in Iran. Most of the callers were declaring their intention to go to Iran as soon as "counter-revolutionary leaders" gave the call.
My friend, who is a well-to-do middle-aged mother of three, about five foot nothing and 100 lbs., said to me, very seriously "I'm going to go to Academy and buy a camo outfit, and we're buying weapons now, as many as we can get, and we're going over there and take back our country!"
Of course nothing has really happened along those lines since then, but it is hard for us to understand how the Iranian diaspora feels about things. They could form the first wave of a pretty potent force.
FWIW, my friend's father, and her husband's father, were both high-ranked generals in the Iranian air force and army respectively. They lost everything when Khomeini took power. Their children of course are thoroughly American, and she has no illusions about their wanting to go back to the "home" they have never known. But I can put myself in her place and know how I'd feel.
You seem to be confusing the radical militants who have control of the government of Iran with the people who are governed against their will.
I'm not sure why things like this are so hard to understand. The flame of freedom burns in varying degrees of brightness in the heart of every man.
Arabs by and large are the ones who come up with the goofy, misogynistic, anti-Western flavor to Islam. You see countries like Turkey and pre-Khomeini Iran that aren't burdened with such quasi stone-age baggage.
Even in Afghanistan and Iran, where ultra-orthodoxy reigns, there is a simmering of resentment. Only in Saudi Arabia is the majority of the people in sync with the radical Islamic sentiment, because it is the birthplace of Wahabism.
I predict that Iran, which is already so much more moderate than it was in the days of Khomeini, will continue to join the rest of the world. I don't know they'll ever have a Shah again--and I'm not sure that would be the best thing anyway--but they do have the seeds of a bona fide Republic there, although it is still hampered by restrictions (only "authorized" parties allowed to stand candidates for election, etc.)
It will be interesting to see. Our prolonged war on terrorism is potentially a huge factor to accelerate change there.
Who?
She's a hit in England.
Iranian Muslims are Shi'ites, a branch of Islam that reveres "Ali" the grandson of Mohammed who was "martyred" by the mainstream Sunni Muslims. This antipathy might be undiscernible by western eyes, but it is profound.
Good Question.
This is great news !!! Let's roll for Freedom, Iranians ! Keep up the good work !
But he was a tyrant nevertheless. And life under the watchful eye of Savak, the Shah's secret police, was brutal.
The Shah's "Peacock Throne" had only existed less than a century, and Iranians never really warmed to the idea of it. Of course it's not as if the Pahlavis ever allowed them to.
This is a GOOD thing, no? YES, it is!!! Reminds me of Tiananmen Square!
If it weren't for the clerics Jimmy Carter, we would be walking through Afghanistan arm in arm with the Iranian Army.
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