Read some history

Submitted by The Historian... (United States), Nov 19, 2006 at 12:49

Is there a statute of limitation on acts of terrorism?

THEY KILLED AMERICAN military and civilian advisors during the dictatorship of Shah Palavi.

Does the fact that they commited assassinations of foreign government officials, and attacks on their embassies on the soil of 13 other countries make it right?

Just because the leadership of that government is one that we opposed?

And as of this week, we are now asking that same government for help with mess in Iraq, tellling them its THEIR responsibility to help fix this problem even though we "broke It."

I might suggest before you can accurately form an intelligent opinion about a foreign policy issue, it helps FIRST know something about its history, otherwise you end up in the mess we have now.

And the by the way, could the recent actions and posture of the Iranian government(including the election of a hard-liner) be a reaction to our own posturing?

Let me give you a little history lesson on some of their largest areas of contention with us:

- Iran once had a Parliamentary style government that was overthrown by the British and American clandestine services and replaced with a puppet (Enter the future Shah of Iran). This was after their democratically elected Prime Minister asked the Standard Oil company (now BP) for a more equitable distribution of oil proceeds...50-50 as opposed t o 80-20 (Guess who got the "20").

Oh by the way....go to BP Oil corporation's website and read about the origin of the company. It says it was "Persian"...that's Iran!

-This illiterate and somewhat incompetent military officer was in turn overthrown in a peoples revolt in the 50s, but guess who re-instated him for the SECOND time? And this time we helped him develop a brutal secret police force known as SAVAK which he used to torture dissidents(even in the basement of his palace).
Many Iranian based human rights advocates gave us plenty of warning about how the Shah's cruelty was creating a ground swell of anger years before the Iranian Revolution began, but they were not given only lip services. And THAT was the START of the Islamic Revolution movement . . .

- They have not forgotten the fact that we supported the Iraqs in their 8 year war against the Iranians that cost between 750,000- 1,000,000 casualities... a war in which we were supporting both sides(ie: The Iran-Contra scandal).

- They are surrounded by American forces on 3 sides....we've labeled them as part of the Axis of Evil, and and have threatened to attack them for the last 5 years.

How else would they react?

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".