Iran. Guatemala. Nicaragua. The list goes on and on. If you think the US gives a shit about whether a government is a democracy or not, you are misled. We have undermined democracies and replaced them with dictatorships; we have embraced dictators and resisted attempts to move toward democracy. Let’s all please quit pretending that idealistic American ‘values’ drive US foreign policy.
Iran is a democracy??? Check out this report from Freedom House:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country=7196&year=2007
Also, I never said anything about principles. It works to make alliances with democracies.
No, Iran *was * a democracy, with a democratically elected leader. Then the US helped overthrow him and install a dictator, the Shah of Iran. Iran’s enmity to the US is a direct result of our history in Iran.
Even now, Iran is a democracy compared to, say, Hussein’s Iraq. The Council of Guardians (12 mullahs) gets to strike any candidate off the ballot they find unacceptable, but within the field remaining, they have genuine multipartisan elections with the votes, apparently, counted honestly. (Unlike the U.S.) N.B.: I’m saying nothing about the human-rights situation there. Democratic government != civil-libertarian government, though the two go well together and always should.
No, not really. Hasn’t every President, including this one, asked that Israel stop erecting settlements in the West Bank? I don’t have a map (and frankly, I think looking at one would be too depressing) but I imagine between 1980 and 2007 there has been a sharp increase in the amount of settlements there, more checkpoints, and more human rights violations against Palestinians.
Not really. Israel doesn’t take responsibility for its (often careless) actions and when it does, it often requires the willful suspension of belief. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but we get ridiculous news reports like, “Israel launched an airstrike on an apartment building in response to rocket fire, killing 20 civilians, including 5 children. No militants were killed in the counterattack.” I can’t never understand how these reporters can say that with a straight face, but they manage every single time.
Now we have the current situation where Israel is going to cut off utility supplies to Gaza. It’s almost like the governing body either (a) aren’t aware of the humanitarian crisis that would erupt there or (b) they just don’t give a fuck. I think it’s the latter.
I’m willing to concede that Israel isn’t a terrible ally, but I can’t see how they would be perceived as a “good ally”.
- Honesty
Those Iranians sure have a hard time getting over what happened before 1979, don’t they? :rolleyes: Actually, public opinion polls have shown (sorry, no cite coming on this one soon) that the Iranians like us; it’s just the scumbag tyrants running the place who have a problem.
Did you consider that maybe it has to do with 1500 years of Islamic expansionism?
I love your logic! So that makes me a great basketball player…and a great tennis player! This is great!
Oh, what I meant to say is I’m a great basketball player and a great tennis player, compared to say, Stephen Hawking.
In all fairness, the USA refused to give Israel recognition codes for their aircraft.
For your major point though, see "Israel aids Allied war effort in thislink.
They were more helpful than I was aware.
Considering that the only places Iran has shown any expansionist ambitions in the past thousand years or so, and most definitely since 1979, are other Islamic countries, no, definitely not. (N.B.: Hostility to Israel has nothing whatsoever to do with “Islamic expansionism,” Iranian or otherwise. It’s revanchism – a completely different political animal. Like Serbia’s ravanchist claim to Kosovo, as distinct from Serbia’s expansionist ambitions in Croatia and Bosnia.)
Cite please? I usually don’t have time to read every news report, certainly can’t watch it on TV, but I did follow the 2006 Hezbollah War pretty closely. I was amazed at how much attention the Israelis paid to avoiding civilian casualties. There were definitely incidents where they were given misinformation from double agents and killed civilians. That was the exception.
And in the day to day offing of Hamas leaders I honestly can’t recall the last time they just hit civilians.
Good reasons already given. I think you also have to look back at Israel’s founding in 1948, when President Truman (over the strong objections of the generally pro-Arab experts at the State Department) saw to it that the U.S. was the first to recognize the new State of Israel. Israel immediately came under attack from neighboring Arab states, and the U.S. provided some military assistance. Yes, Truman benefitted politically from the decision in his tough reelection race that fall, but by all accounts he also deeply believed it was morally and geopolitically the right thing to do.
Since then, Israel has generally been a good friend and ally to the U.S., and has generally done as we ask (the attack on the USS Liberty, settlements on the West Bank, the invasion(s) of Lebanon and other issues notwithstanding). As noted above, Israel has many friends among the Christian Right and among American Jews, both groups of which are politically active and influential, arguably moreso than mere numbers would suggest. Israel buys a lot of military equipment from us now (although they make a lot of their own) and is an increasingly-important trading partner. And it’s the sole stable democracy in the region, which although not the be-all and end-all for close ties with the U.S., is a definite plus.
Well, my point is just that the US willingly and with full knowledge destroyed a democracy and put in place a dictator who ruled Iran brutally for 26 years. You wanted an example of the US opposing a democracy, and I gave you one. And you are right; the Iranian people are fairly pro-Western. Which makes one wonder if possibly Iran would be an ally if we hadn’t fucked them over. *Our * actions lead to the Islamic revolution and the ascension of the mullahs.
I am just trying to say that if you think Israel’s democracy is the reason for US support of Israel you are wrong. Democracy has not been an important factor in US foreign policy since WWII (or before WWII, for that matter).
Why would we do that? We’d have to man them like we do in Germany or Japan or South Korea, which would be a waste of personnel. Israel is like an extra hand, they do it for us.
It’s a perk, for sure. It’s a calculated risk to enlist the help of dictators, but we still do it because the advantages are many. Those who don’t follow orders are punished severely and made examples of, while those who cooperate amass wealth and power.
Well, it certainly doesn’t work that way here, on any number of domestic and foreign issues. If you don’t know our government’s policy, just look at opinion polls and it’ll probably be the opposite of what the majority wishes. One could argue our democratic institutions are broken or actually working against us, but we’re still an open and free society and we have elections.
Of course you can – any time the voters want that. That’s how democracy works – how it’s supposed to work, anyway. (I recall reading in H.G. Wells’ Outline of History how 19th-Century European diplomats despaired of the frustrating impossibility of forming an “understanding” with the U.S., because of the shifts in power and policy from election to election; a state of affairs of which Wells emphatically approved.)
I think he was assuming Israel’s electorate remains pro-American, BG. Although you can certainly be pro-American and not pro-American government.
Which makes one wonder if possibly Iran would be an ally if we hadn’t fucked them over. Our actions lead to the Islamic revolution and the ascension of the mullahs.
Doesn’t it get exhausting? Cherry-picking history until you get enough to blame your own country for everything?
Truth: Persia/Iran was in trouble the moment that some of them didn’t want to wear a veil anymore, and some of them did.
Damn space bar. What I meant was:
Doesn’t it get exhausting? Cherry-picking history until you get enough to blame your own country for everything? Truth: Persia/Iran was in trouble the moment that some of them didn’t want to wear a veil anymore, and some of them did.
Non-western countries trying to modernize and being dragged back into the proverbial shit by their angry peasant populations was nothing new. What led to the revolution was twofold: 1) a fundamentalist backlash to a regional secularist modernist trend (see Turkey), and 2) a growing socio-economic disparity between the Iranians themselves.
The U.S. didn’t cause the first or the second. We supported the guy who was arguably responsible for number 2, but then so did alot of Iranians.
Honesty, I didn’t say ‘stop doing something’. I said ‘do something.’ There is a difference. And generally, when I said ‘do something’, I meant in regards to country-to-country relations, not domestic rule.
Oh, yes, and it’s nice you can imagine things about settlements and you can imagine things about random slaughter of civilians.
Cite, please. Bullshit otherwise.
Grossbottom: I would like to provide a cite, because I’m not remembering what I read it in, but I seem to recall the CIA was instrumental in the establishment of the Shah, post-WWII. It was listed as one of their first major successes. We been messing with Iran for a long time. Sadly.
(I still blame the Brits for the whole mess, though.)
Grossbottom: I would like to provide a cite, because I’m not remembering what I read it in, but I seem to recall the CIA was instrumental in the establishment of the Shah, post-WWII. It was listed as one of their first major successes. We been messing with Iran for a long time. Sadly.
(I still blame the Brits for the whole mess, though.)
Wiki’s not horribly reliable, but this seems accurate.
Oh there’s no question the CIA installed and supported him. But it was a revolution a long time in coming, that’s my point. Pre-Shah modernist reforms laid the groundwork, and painted a picture of a divided Iran, long before the coup.