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2002-07-18 Axis of Evil

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Posted by Fred Pruitt 2002-07-18 05:09 pm|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Warrens' article is terrific! I read it and found myself going 'huh?' "lighted candles to mourn the victims of 9/11", "Stars and Stripes gets unfurled" etc etc.

My view of Persians has always been coloured by the events of 1979, those raving ayatollahs and the insane 'human wave' battles with the Iraqis.

Looks like I need get a bit more clued-up regarding Iran.

Bush has been making some very smart moves recently; "The Speech" that has taken out Arafat and shown up most of our EU pinhead 'leaders' (yup, I live in England) to be the idiotarians we always really knew them to be, and now this.

People, we do live in interesting times. The Islamofascists started something that they are going to have a very very hard time stopping.

Now then, I wonder what Bush is going to do to the House of Saud...

Posted by Tony 2002-07-18 15:52:33|| 2002-07-18 15:52:33|| Front Page Top

#2 I think Warran might have too rosy an assessment of the degree of support for the U.S. to be found there, and I hope I'm wrong. Prior to the fall of the Shah, the Persians I knew were all very civilized, very intelligent, very secular people. The were also virtually all military or diplomatic people. Even though I knew I wasn't meeting a cross-section of Iran, I was still surprised at the level of anti-Americanism that showed up with the arrival of Khomeini. And after the fall of the Shah, I was surprised when some of them changed their hats.

I think that there's probably a degree of support for the West in the abstract in Iran, and in some other circles a support for the USA for reasons both good and bad, and probably a few silly reasons as well. While my tongue wasn't too far into my cheek when I said they used to be a civilized country, we have to keep in mind that the civilization's Persian, not American. I think the Shah went too far in his efforts toward secularization and ended up with an unreasoned backlash that the theocrats took advantage of; but they made the mistake of imposing a system that's essentially foreign to the country, more Arab in its approach than Persian. The ayatollahs are generally smarter than the Afghan mullahs, and their turbans are cleaner, but the system's not that different. They're rushing headlong toward a fall because they're lousy administrators and they're convinced of their infallibility. If you're infallible, you don't need no damned opinions from the Great Unwashed.

When they're gone - and it might even happen before Iraq's taken out - it's going to leave a hole in the terror machinery that it'll take one hell of a lot of Saudi money to fill. The ayatollahs are the drivers behind Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and they are probably the ultimate controllers of Hamas. With a nationalist regime in Tehran, enjoying a civilization that's Persian rather than "Islamic," that produces a huge counterweight to the Arabians and their always xenophobic and often amateurish plots.

With both Iran and Iraq out of the way, the Sauds are pretty well left standing buck nekkid in a snow storm, surrounded by a pack of wolves. Bush might not be counting on having to do anything about the House of Saud...

Posted by Fred 2002-07-18 16:33:46|| 2002-07-18 16:33:46|| Front Page Top