Simple Question regarding American intervention

Certainly not but the intervention over several decades has made us a target and now it's our problem.

 

don't know if thread is serious, but I'll treat it as such.

There's a very good book on this, http://whynationsfail.com/ by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Reading about the Middle East's institutional drift from the dysfunctional Ottoman Empire makes me think that some things would be the way they are no matter what happened now.

I certainly, however, don't think things could be worse if America didn't invade a few nations while propping up oil regimes like Saudi Arabia.

There has to be some acknowledgement that what has happened has to be at least partly propelled by America funding the Taliban and A-Q in the 1980s, and propping up many autocratic regimes in the ME. Almost every agent in this conflict defines itself as either a proxy of American power and money or in stark opposition to it. That has not helped untangle whatever negativity you think is "embedded in the land".

 

No, but it would be a lot better. You can't start with Bush though. You have to look at things like the U.S. toppling the secular democratic Iranian government in order to place the Shah in charge, which led eventually to Islamic extremists taking over the powerful nation to use for their agenda. You have to look at the U.S. support of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, which helped create al-Qaeda and thuz Daesh. Then there's the British support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt back when they were trying to control Egyptian nationalism that threatened their business interests. And now we are allied and supporting Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the two biggest states aiding Jihadist groups in the area.

The list goes on, but I think you get the idea.

 

There's a lot of back channel **** where we support fund and train insurgency groups against regimes that don't play ball with us. I can't separate each fact from baseless conspiracy theory, but there have been more than enough verifiable cases.

Plus our **** doesn't smell like roses no matter how you see it, and the consistent support of backwards despots makes me think they're only bit a small piece on a bigger board. A pawn can only advance so far.

If Saudi Arabia teeters from the oil revolution, who knows what will happen. Probably good in the long run, but we have to live during the in between.

 

Sunni and Shia are no better than Catholics and Protestants. They will use their sect to rally tribalism for economic dominance.

It's pretty much the given nature of humans.

 

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Since the question is hypothetical, let's pose some more hypotheticals:

- What if the US had not directly prevented Turkey and Iran from developing into modern, secular democracies? What if Turkey and Iran became the 'beacons of freedom' that GWB tried to create at the point of a gun in Gulf War II, only thirty or forty years earlier?
- What if the US did not train and fund Osama Bin Laden and his jihadists?
- What if the US did not sell weapons to Saddam Hussein, which he would use to kill countless Iranians, who had become a problem precisely because of the US's previous f***up?
- What if the US did not send tons of aid and weapons to an oppressive Saudi kingdom?
- What if the US had not created a massive power vacuum in Iraq and didn't have enough boots on the ground to secure it?

...and on, and on, and on...

Here's something bad that would happen if the US hadn't done these things:
Oil would be more expensive for us. That's pretty much it. That's the list. The price of an important resource would not have been ours to dictate.

Let's do some more hypotheticals:

- What if, instead of spending trillions of dollars and ending millions of human lives to meddle and wage war in the ME over and over again... instead of that, what if we spent all of that money on solving our own energy problems? Seriously. What if, since the mid 70s, we took all that money from the weapons sold to Saddam, Saud, and others... All that money spent on so many wars. The trillion alone in Iraq this century. What if we spent two or three trillion dollars on pushing oil energy to maximum efficiency, and developing alternatives?
- What if when US leaders spoke about liberty, freedom, and justice, they actually had credibility, because the US wasn't directly involved in propping up and protecting evil dictators?
- What if, when Islamofascists needed to whip their followers into a frenzy, they didn't have the USA to call up as The Great Satan, because the USA was totally uninvolved in their crap?


Maybe Turkey and Iran wouldn't have developed into secular democracies. Maybe they would have, but fundamentalists would have fought back. Maybe maybe maybe maybe. But we'll never know, will we? Because the US had to stick it's dick in every single hornets' nest over there, over and over and over again.

 

This is the stupidest question. . . . No, the Arabs would bounce out of time into the year 1011. . . . 2015 is 2015. The are in 2015. . . .

Flexible and accommodating to what? Monster truck rallies? Jerry Falwell? Dick Cheney Transplant Fund?

Can we get some evidence on the Pakistan claims?

Blame what on Bush? Who gave a sh&@ about Bush by the way? Accountability for what?

 

yeah, we talk about those massive gummy worms you can buy from that weirdo shop. ain't that s**t crazy?

 

This is very true and we're still stuck in the same backwards policies that made the cold war era a fun place to live in.

There's been theories that the era of stagflation ended because of massive infusions of Arab money and oil to the U.S. and U.K. In the form of quid pro quo defense contracts and asset capital investments. Of course none of that money enriched the Arab people but this long commitment had propped up a period where western economists had no ****ing clue what was happening.

Or you believe Thatcher and Reaganomics saved the day with their senseless increased defense spending and cuts to welfare services...

I think Turkey will get there if the next president isn't an Islamist, big if right? They have much going for them. I think the people know it and will fight for it.

For the other hypos, for too long Americans were allowed to stick their heads in the sand thinking our leaders and military could handle everything outside our walls. Throw money and or bullets at the problem...problem solved. I'm sure that delusion played a role in why dubya was elected.

This has changed and will change faster in the next ten years.

I don't know when this collective repetitive amnesia (think the movie Momento) will stop repeating itself, but it's time to put in some big boy pants and look outside the world.

 

Why do you act like this is something new? Do you think centuries of constant fighting in that region can be solved over night with secularism? Do you think they have been fighting over oil for the last 1000 years? Or for any other reason at all?
Islam is not the reason. Islam is the tool they use to control the masses. Its giving power to a select group who use religion as a name to do whatever they want.

 

This is actually a great question , a proper answer would require a book . It is definitely a difficult problem. It also depends on what you mean by intervention, there has been as much economic intervention as military. Good food for thought , although pointless to the current landscape, still it can be interesting to think about things like this .

 

Here is a simple metric on whether American intervention in Muslim nations is a net positive or negative.

How many Islamic terrorists existed before and after OIF and OEF? The answer to that should be the answer to your question.

 

The middle east has never been peaceful, and probably never will be. They still live and act like they are in the middle ages.

However if the West never poked its nose ever into that region and just let them duke it out we probably wouldn't have that much animosity and terrorism towards the West like it is today. They'd be killing eachother, but they wouldn't take the aggression onto other countries, maybe.

I still think the only "peaceful" middle east we are ever going to see is ruled by dictators, which is sad in itself.

 

A religion that wants to slaughter unbelievers ultimately doesn't care how those unbelievers behave.

All that matters is that they are unbelievers (although some, like Jews, are worse than others).

 

In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow the democratically secular leader of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, because of concerns over his attempts to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. They then helped institute the authoritarian and dictatorial Shah of Iran, who repressed his people and helped the U.S. and U.K. oil companies keep control over the Iranian oil industry (as opposed to the democratically elected government of the Iranian people which had been overthrown).

The coup and the Shah resulted in radicalization in the population, particularly, but not limited to, Islamic radicalization. This resulted in the Iranian revolution and the taking of Iran by radical Islamists. They have subsequently used their control of Iran to help fund and further Shia terror groups in the middle east, which, along with the Sunni terror groups funded by the U.S. allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are the leading causes of the turmoil in the middle east.

So, when you say things like peace and democracy are not possible in the middle east, please know that peaceful and democratic governments and movements have existed in the middle east -- but the U.S. and U.K. have fought and overthrown them.

 

Smartest conservative viewpoint on Islam in Clutchfans history.