Well that's for sure it's been a Mad Mad World all these decades and it's ramping up daily. I sure liked that magazine but had to hide it from my parents as they thought it was sacrilegious.
Iran's always been right next to this amazingly important yet vulnerable international shipping route (great sentence!), so it's never been a good idea not to befriend them. there has been some progress though, because even less than just a century ago the arrogance and cruelty of Empire was taken for granted, but now we know. exposure is essential.
diplomacy goes a long way. based on religious differences we fought a vicious 100 years war in 16/17th century Europe that ended with a beautiful text (Peace of Westphalia, 1648) and a clear marking of who was allowed to do what, why, where and when. it's similarly possible to reach a non-violent co-existence with the muslim countries. war is, after all, a racket (Smedley Butler) - https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf
Iran isn't like Saudi Arabia which is both pragmatic and vicious in its version of Islam. They get away with some of the vilest abuses possible because bin Salman has a great sense of business. He has no interest in destroying Israel though he undoubtedly loathes Jews in general. He knows how to play the game in public.
Iran is a unique nation. They have a remarkable cultural heritage that predates Islam and their version of Islam is messianic and apocalyptic which are really bad ingredients to throw in the mix.
yes. when fanatics take over a nation it creates an almost unbearable tension on many levels. however, demonising Iran doesn't take into account its unique cultural heritage and all too easily serves as an excuse for trying to destroy it instead of finding ways for co-existence. even Iraq seems to have found a way to co-exist with it. thanks to expanding technologies the world is becoming increasingly smaller and we can't afford not to communicate and ease the tension.
You don't understand. The mullahs who politically and theocratically control Iran are not interested in co-existence.
I don't want them destroyed. The West fucked up enough already with a century of trying to construct what our idiot politicians wanted Iran to be.
I want to contain them from being able to finance their shenanigans everywhere any sizeable Shia minority or Shia majority lives.
The mullahs are like the mirror image of ultra-nationalist ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. It's precisely the same mindset and equally dangerous to peace anywhere.
Well-put. Things started to go to hell in 2008 when the Obama campaign conspired with Iran for support in putting Obama in office (that one went unnoticed by the press, unlike the fake collaboration of the Trump campaign with Russia). Part of the support was financial, funneled through Gaza, whose international county code is GA,, the same as the state code for Georgia. Obama's campaign donation software comes out of the box with controls to detect foreign contributions. These parametric settings have to be consciously turned off. They were turned off until a whistleblower came forward. Obama's campaign later announced it had returned "most of the money."
The only US President (other than Mean Tweets Orange Man who ever did anything concrete to discourage Iran was Jimmy Carter.
Carter has been the only President of my lifetime I admired. Made me extremely sad when he too said fairly recently that he thought Russia helped get Trump elected.
I'd found it shameful at the time how the Carter Administration treated the Shah after he fled Iran. It's true that the Shah's regime was monstrously brutal to its people but he did the US's bidding in so many ways and abandoning a dying man was pretty ugly.
But nevertheless I felt overall Carter was a decent and honest man. I shoulda stuck to my earlier viewpoint.
We are largely in agreement. There were things that Carter did that seriously weakened the U.S. I'll probably write to you privately about those. I don't believe Carter was anything more than a fundamentally decent man who was in way over his head. He had no idea that other people actually lied, many of them very effectively. He tried to be honest, so everybody's like him, right? We all have some of that, it hobbled Carter. On inauguration day 1981, Carter flew to greet the Iran hostages from the Embassy, something that I thought was kind of Reagan.
That was a crack up! Thanks for the laughs!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yes. I needed some light heartedness.
Don't we all. Such cruel fate that the MAD Magazine of our youth ain't around to sustain us.
Well that's for sure it's been a Mad Mad World all these decades and it's ramping up daily. I sure liked that magazine but had to hide it from my parents as they thought it was sacrilegious.
Iran's always been right next to this amazingly important yet vulnerable international shipping route (great sentence!), so it's never been a good idea not to befriend them. there has been some progress though, because even less than just a century ago the arrogance and cruelty of Empire was taken for granted, but now we know. exposure is essential.
It's not possible to befriend them. That's the heart of the tragedy.
diplomacy goes a long way. based on religious differences we fought a vicious 100 years war in 16/17th century Europe that ended with a beautiful text (Peace of Westphalia, 1648) and a clear marking of who was allowed to do what, why, where and when. it's similarly possible to reach a non-violent co-existence with the muslim countries. war is, after all, a racket (Smedley Butler) - https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf
Iran isn't like Saudi Arabia which is both pragmatic and vicious in its version of Islam. They get away with some of the vilest abuses possible because bin Salman has a great sense of business. He has no interest in destroying Israel though he undoubtedly loathes Jews in general. He knows how to play the game in public.
Iran is a unique nation. They have a remarkable cultural heritage that predates Islam and their version of Islam is messianic and apocalyptic which are really bad ingredients to throw in the mix.
yes. when fanatics take over a nation it creates an almost unbearable tension on many levels. however, demonising Iran doesn't take into account its unique cultural heritage and all too easily serves as an excuse for trying to destroy it instead of finding ways for co-existence. even Iraq seems to have found a way to co-exist with it. thanks to expanding technologies the world is becoming increasingly smaller and we can't afford not to communicate and ease the tension.
You don't understand. The mullahs who politically and theocratically control Iran are not interested in co-existence.
I don't want them destroyed. The West fucked up enough already with a century of trying to construct what our idiot politicians wanted Iran to be.
I want to contain them from being able to finance their shenanigans everywhere any sizeable Shia minority or Shia majority lives.
The mullahs are like the mirror image of ultra-nationalist ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. It's precisely the same mindset and equally dangerous to peace anywhere.
very true! that's the 'fanatics' I referred to earlier. psychopaths galore.
Well-put. Things started to go to hell in 2008 when the Obama campaign conspired with Iran for support in putting Obama in office (that one went unnoticed by the press, unlike the fake collaboration of the Trump campaign with Russia). Part of the support was financial, funneled through Gaza, whose international county code is GA,, the same as the state code for Georgia. Obama's campaign donation software comes out of the box with controls to detect foreign contributions. These parametric settings have to be consciously turned off. They were turned off until a whistleblower came forward. Obama's campaign later announced it had returned "most of the money."
The only US President (other than Mean Tweets Orange Man who ever did anything concrete to discourage Iran was Jimmy Carter.
Carter has been the only President of my lifetime I admired. Made me extremely sad when he too said fairly recently that he thought Russia helped get Trump elected.
I hold Carter in contempt for his weakness and for his huge contribution to 9/11 by decimating our Human Intelligence capability.
The Russia hoax was proven in court filings to be exactly that.
I'd found it shameful at the time how the Carter Administration treated the Shah after he fled Iran. It's true that the Shah's regime was monstrously brutal to its people but he did the US's bidding in so many ways and abandoning a dying man was pretty ugly.
But nevertheless I felt overall Carter was a decent and honest man. I shoulda stuck to my earlier viewpoint.
We are largely in agreement. There were things that Carter did that seriously weakened the U.S. I'll probably write to you privately about those. I don't believe Carter was anything more than a fundamentally decent man who was in way over his head. He had no idea that other people actually lied, many of them very effectively. He tried to be honest, so everybody's like him, right? We all have some of that, it hobbled Carter. On inauguration day 1981, Carter flew to greet the Iran hostages from the Embassy, something that I thought was kind of Reagan.
while State under Reagan was completely Kissingerised & Brzezinsky'ed, wasn't it?
Probably. I was more concerned with my boss, Admiral Poindexter, at the time.