LJ Idol Season 7 Week 8 - Rock the Casbah

[walkertxkitty]

o/` "Now the king told the boogie men

Comments

[ionotter]

God Bless my parents for being news hounds and more interested in books and documentaries than "The Price is Right".

For that reason, none of this here is new to me. I've always known this. I remember when Shah Palavi came to Manhattan for chemotherapy. I remember the student uprising, and the subsequent hostage situation that lasted over a year. I remember it all, even if I didn't grasp the significance at the time.

I grasp it now.

Ooohhhh, yes. I grasp it now. And I wield it, too. Against any asshole who tries to promote any sort of aggression against Iran.

We made our bed, now we have to sleep in it.

We're just going to have to come to terms with the fact that Ahmadinejad is going to be tapping us on the back now and then.

[walkertxkitty]

You know what my dad did for a living. These things were never far from our family's influence growing up. I've met some of these people and their families. The Husseins really WERE friends of mine, family friends to whom I literally owed my life (that's a story for another time and one which puts America in no better a light).

You're right about that, too. This situation --- the entire Middle East situation --- was preventable. WAS. Nothing short of a miracle will stop what's coming now.

[je_reviens]

How interesting that I should read this today of all days -- the day irradiated and received my Masters degree. It's interesting bc I had to write a 70 page research paper about Iran and Middle East/US history and foreign policy for a research methods class over a year ago. It was a huge undertaking bc the class wasn't on foreign policy or politics. The subject was given so that I would research and assess academic research sources other than books and write an analysis. In order to accurately assess I had to read books and become an expert on the topic and then write my analysis. At the time I protested vocally being given a topic I found monumentally boring. And then forced to spend 12 whole weeks doing nothing but researching the topic and writing it up. Amazingly the more expert I became on the history of Iran and then the Middle East and on the history of US and British foreign policy, the more interesting the topic became! And now I am some kinda expert. So I was very interested in your post tho of course you miss your mark

[walkertxkitty]

Hey, congratulations! I'm all too aware of just how much it takes to get a Master's. Like you, I started out thinking the politics would be boring...but as you said, you can't really separate the politics from the people because the two are so intertwined.

When this becomes a true essay for my site, I will cite sources properly. For LJI, that's not necessary and might even cost me votes. It bothered me to leave it so, but I did for the contest purposes.

Consider it a rough draft. I didn't even begin to touch some of the topic I wanted to address which was just too much for the audience at hand.

[theafaye]

So much I'm nodding along to here. Count me as another of those minorities that believe in leaving countries to sort out their own politics without us imposing Western models on them. It's not as though any of the first world countries have got it perfect enough to be able to confidently say "this is how you do it."

And on a complete tangent, a little part of me had a small chuckle that NZ doesn't make it onto the list of first world countries.

[walkertxkitty]

I think, at the time, it was classed under the UK? The model is old, dating back to the 1950s, and I can't remember when NZ and Australia were given their sovereignty.

I might have written myself out of LJI, but it needed said.

[vik_thor]

Very Interesting.
I think I would like to read Alt History based on 'the path not taken' in Middle East affairs.

(One thing: the links after the middle of the 4th ¶ (after your first link to Houma Today don't work. They all have your LJ address at the beginning… Something I take it you won't be able to fix until after voting is done? Most of them work if you copy/paste it and remove the first part, but there were a couple that didn't…)

How much do you think Israel is a catalyst for our presence there? i.e. if some of the proposals under Modern Times had worked out?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Jewish_state#Other_attempts_of_Jewish_self-governance_throughout_history

[walkertxkitty]

Dang it, I was afraid it would do that! The involvement of Israel in our interest there pre-dates WW1 when the British first interested the US in getting involved as their allies. As you know, Israel didn't exist until about 1950, when it was artificially created out of a disputed territory. The territory it was to cover and how it was to be governed was first laid out in the MacMahon correspondences and then revised at Versailles. The creation of such was mostly a concession to the French and Russians for their support of the British in the war efforts.

[myrna_bird]

A very well-organized and informative piece. I am guilty of ignorance for much of what you wrote but I did read it and I do vote. Thank you.

[walkertxkitty]

I wouldn't consider it ignorance nor would I be too hard on yourself for not knowing about such things. I had to dig hard into several out of print or not readily available texts (the exception being Kintzer, who is on the bestseller's list) in order to find the information. Some of it I have firsthand knowledge of on both sides because my father was special intelligence and I knew the Husseins personally as well as the Saudi Arabian royal family.

Thanks for taking the time to read, I appreciate it.