Monday, August 20, 2007

What kind of Middle East do we want?



Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, August 2007:”Iran constitutes the single most important single country strategic challenge to the Unites States and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see.”

What kind of Middle East do we want? The present Republican administration contends that above all, a nation like Iran would not fit into our picture. The Iranian government would not accept our administration policy as the sole policy for the Middle East. The administration wants the natural resources of the area and a market where our corporations would sell our hardware and second-class arsenals.

Iranian potential to develop nuclear arsenals would be of minimum consequence to our national defense; after all we faced Soviet’s fully developed nuclear arsenals. Iran, a third class nation, is more of nuisance than a real threat. Iran could be a threat to our satellite Arabic nations, not by shear military force, but by example of defying our Middle Eastern policy. The satellite nations, like Iran under Shah, have a tenuous existence. One way or another, the people of these nations will free themselves from the yoke of their despotic masters. The administration finds it much easier to deal with a single ruler than to deal with a whole nation. We just pretend to desire the concept of messy democracy for these nations, knowing well the hostility of the regional population to our American foreign policy.

Are we trying to make an example of Iran? Iran under Shah was incapable to produce a sewing needle; in contrast, Iran today is developing a strong population of educated men and women, a solid industrial base and national pride. Iranian democracy must develop from the Iranian base, a brand of democracy suited to the historical and cultural sense of the population. Like our American Republic, democracy in Iran will nurture with time, experiencing up and down until the Bill of Rights of Iran will be established.

What do we, the people of this great Republic, demand from our Administration for the Middle East?

2 comments:

  1. My God, you are so poorly educated about Iran, especially under the Shah.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When Mohammad Reza assumed power in 1941, he attempted to continue his father's modernization efforts. By 1978 Iran had experienced great changes, but progress had been uneven for various elements of the population and different parts of the country over the preceding half- century. The Revolution of 1979 substituted "self-reliance" for Westernization as the focus of development. The importing of luxury goods, such as color televisions and stereos, was stopped, and the funding for development and construction in particular was cut significantly. Reductions in construction spending affected the entire economy and sent the gross national product (GNP) on a downward spiral. The budget cuts made in the name of "self-reliance," after the Revolution in 1979 and the onset of the war with Iraq in 1980, did additional damage to the economy.

    http://www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/iran/ECONOMY.html

    read it all, fool.

    ReplyDelete