Civil War in Syria

[Simfan34]

I have an inexplicable soft spot for Asma al-Assad. It's going to be horrible to see her and her children dragged around the streets. Syria's such a shame. Up until this whole thing started I really did think there was a chance at reform and opening up, that Assad could prove to a progressive moderniser, which his background certainly suggested. Now that's all a dead dream, along with thousands of Syrians.

[Simfan34]

That's quite a contrast to our more hospitable treatment of former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

Yes, and Russia is actually taking the better stance amazingly.

WTF? Our betrayal and treatment of the Shah was the greatest moral and geopolitical travesty of the past fifty years. Carter singlehandedly let him fall.

[Simfan34]

Well, I'm disappointed but not really surprised at the reaction. In a forum where pornography is celebrated as artistic expression and prostitution considered liberating, I should have expected that a regime as modern and progressive as the Shah's would be given so little credit.

Ah, I assume you're all waving your arms at this point. Talking about how Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was a megalomaniac dictator or the like. From the people that exult Hugo Chavez. I suppose dramatic economic growth means very little to you people. Iran had been posting growth rates similar to that of Japan by the 1970s, had the revolution never occurred, it is likely Iran would have ranked within the top ten largest economies in the world by now. The rate of development in imperial Iran was frenetic, six, seven, eight percent per annum. And it wasn't just oil. One of the Shah's major goals was the diversification of the Iranian economy, and the country was experiencing steady, consistent industrialization, with several factories, auto plants, and steel mills opening regularly. And who can forget the infamous "Guess Who's Building Nuclear Power Plants?" ad? The Shah was ready for a post-oil economy, and wanted Iran to become a major economic power, with or without petroleum.

Let's not forget his social policies. Inequality was kept low because of the reforms of the White Revolution, redistributing lands to tenant sharecroppers that had once belonged to the clerics. The dramatic increases in literacy and education. The modernization of the health services of the country, electrification, irrigation, bringing the Green Revolution to Iran. All worthless, I suppose. Then there was his progressive social policies, extending higher education to the masses, allowing local councils. And his policies towards women, in education, in the workplace, in the armed forces. This was a major triumph, and even the revolution could not reverse that. Because Iranian women cannot be forced back into the chador, Iran remains fairly liberal in this regard, when compared to say, Saudi Arabia, but it still became very repressive by any decent standard.

I'm not even going to address apologism for that dictator-in-the-wings, Mosaddegh.

Allowing this state to collapse into what it has become was a moral travesty because it was the Carter Administration who refused to support the Shah in his time of need, allowing the disgusting Khomeini free passage in France instead of detaining him as they should have. The called for wishy-washy, unspecific "reform", emboldening agents of anarchy and protest. They refused to send arms and riot control goods to Iran- so where police would have used tear gas and rubber pellets, they were left with no choice but to use live bullets. By not standing up to the rioters' demands, the Carter Administration encouraged further unrest.

Of course, it is important to realize several in the West were more than willing to see the Shah fall, being afraid of his scheme to have Iran as a major world power, especially in the United Kingdom, where they were still bitter about the loss of "their" oil. Certainly Powell-esque voices of this sort only encouraged the negligent and malfeasant policy towards Iran. The Shah was a strong, reliable ally of the United States, but only to a point, and he always put his country's interests first. That unsettled some people, that the Shah was not some vain potentate willing to sell out his people in order to live in luxury.

It is a geopolitical travesty because, well, it allowed the Imperial State of Iran to become the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is almost unfathomable to conceive what the Middle East would have looked like had the Shah remained in power. No Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. No Iran-Iraq War, or at least, an Iranian floorwipe. No Gulf War. No Iranian backed Hezbollah or Hamas. No 9/11. No Iraq War. No Afghan War... that's only the beginning. Imagine a Middle East dominated by a progressive, pro-Western Iran, instead of a backwards Iran or Saudi Arabia. Just imagine it. In almost no way could any person alive today be worse off had the Shah stayed in power. I'm sure this, as you just said, disgusts you.

[Simfan34]

Not to suggest I think that the "success" of Shah's economic policies justifies his disgusting regime, Simfan really needs to take this into consideration:

I'm not afraid to admit that while slightly familiar with the Solow growth model, I'm not entirely sure how this pertains to my argument.

[Simfan34]

Of course, I've never heard this hypothesis but I'm disinclined to believe it. 1950-2000 was hardly a period of "rapid worldwide growth", one should ask the stagnant Latin American economies, disintegrating African ones, or peaking European ones, or India, or the USSR, it goes on. The only major stories of the period was the expected European recovery and the strong emergence of several Asian economies.

There's no need to belittle my knowledge of economics. Though I'm sure you knew it would be extra-offensive to an economics major.

Of that list, BTW, the only one I'm willing to support is Park Chung-Hee. The rest were incompetents and autocrats.

[Simfan34]

I'd rather be free and poor than wealthy yet under the boot of a SAVAK agent.

Ah, the security agency with 200 prisoners? How frightening. And then the one that became the truly frightening SAVAMA under the IRI? How ironic. The truth is the vast majority of instability in Iran was perpetrated either by fundamentalists or communists. The real radical fringe. Hardly your sort. Better to stay in the Imperial centre.

[Simfan34]

We're not done, Nhoj.

I actually wrote a paper in undergrad for one of my classes looking at American media portrayals of the Iranian revolution, and Simfan's perspective of the Shah and the revolutionaries is almost verbatim what the Wall Street Journal was printing in the winter of 79-80. The Shah was always portrayed sympathetically: he and his people were serious modernizers who knew how to run an economy; the revolutionaries were all hot-headed Muslim savages, whipped up into a riotous frenzy, who would destroy the Iranian economy. Never mind the fact that the revolution was supported by all strata of society, secular and religious, working and middle class, and never mind that the Shah was a murderous, nasty dictator, who created a society of stark inequality and corruption, robbing Iran of its oil wealth to fund his opulent palaces and have meals flown in from Paris.

I'd rather be free and poor than wealthy yet under the boot of a SAVAK agent.

If you lived in Iran in the late 1970s you'd probably be under the boot of a SAVAK agent and poor. I don't know where Simfan gets this nonsense that Iran was some prosperous place free of economic inequality.

Yes, because that's what they actually were. Of course, it's very easy to get people into revolutionary, fervour, especially when your cleric is telling you to. Many of these "secular" sectors you actually talk about were actually communist. And they did ruin the economy.

Murderous, nasty dictator. You, of course, bring up the festivities associated with the 2500th anniversary of Iranian monarchy. Funny how they always talk about the food, and never the massive new infrastructural projects, or the thirty two hundred schools built to also mark the occasion. Or the iconic Shahyad Tower, but that appeals to the aesthete in me.

And the palaces? A leader isn't allowed to build a new residence or two in a 40-odd year reign? The hypocrisy is killing me.

[Simfan34]

The Shah was progressive, and the advances made were heroic, so, yes, he was a "progressive hero".

[Simfan34]

I had an embarrassing soft spot for Asma al-Assad before this thing. Indeed, my whole opinion of Syria before the civil war could be described as tragically misguided. Hope for reform, hope for detente. I, in a way, was rooting for al-Assad. Of course, the war stamped this out. But this story made me wonder, made me fear, if I still have such a soft spot.

How embarrassing.

[Simfan34]

I don't see why we should consider this after what happened when we tried that in Iraq.

[Simfan34]

Another problem are that a partition basedf on the borders and factions on the map, would result in a Al Nusra (Al Qaeda) and a ISIS state. This are not a viable solution. The only solution of ISIS are the complete destruction of it, Al Nusra on the other hand, while connected to Al Qaeda are more moderate than ISIS but still horrible and it's mostly based on local Syrians rather than foreign adventures. So maybe a compromise could be reached. But still do anyone want a Al Qaeda Emirate in  northern syria.

You're not seriously suggesting Jabhat al-Nusra is the "moderate" option these days, right?

[Simfan34]

So only Fallujah left, and then Mosul awaits (I don't believe that Mosul liberation actually will be next goal as Iraqi authorities says)
Good, Iraqi Army with Iranian support actually can do something positive. Although I heard that

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it's not true and any militias were not supporting army in this final offensive. Anybody knows which one is true?

The absence of militias was reported on Newshour last night as well.

[Simfan34]

These "Turkmens" aren't actually Turkmens, right?

[Simfan34]

We are betraying the Kurds for Erdogan and will almost certainly come to regret this.

[Simfan34]

Let me get out the world's smallest violin...

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