10 ms·

It is simply dumb. The CIA certainly didn't want Khomeini in power, but him being elected is certainly a direct consequence of the CIA toppling their democracy.

Jugurtha 6y ago
As it did with Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on and on. Ironically, this has pushed the world away from the U.S. towards Russia. Good job trying to further the interests of the U.S. by driving everyone away from it with chaos, and now a president drives the U.S. allies away from it. It didn't take long before Germany started getting closer to Russia. "Conclusive evidence", whether for Iraq or China, leads to a U.S. official dangling a vial of dried bat semen in front of the UN Security Council. It's exacerbated with reactions to events. The most recent of which is the "bounty" issue. Officials and journalists are outraged that Russian intelligence services allegedly gave money to Taliban to target U.S. troops. Anyone with half a brain would think: isn't this the same thing the CIA did by training Taliban on U.S. soil, with Special Forces, giving them RPGs, weapons and money to kill Soviet troops? I mean, the US/Taliban/Russia is almost a Vicky Cristina Barcelona triangle. The mere fact of these former intelligence officers and government officials being outraged is insulting. More on relations: Notice how Putin's speeches and interview differ from the usual U.S. diplomats and officials. U.S. officials and diplomats' speeches would piss off anyone with a functioning brain, it is the usual silly patriotism with wavy flags, exporting freedom and democracy, stars and stripes, and demagogy. No one can get away with that because the counter-examples are too many. This is bad salesmanship. In contrast, Putin takes the approach to explain the lay of the land, underplays his role, and takes the position of the underdog: "my job is to look for the Russian people, we're not as powerful as the U.S., look at what they did with all that power", and when people look, they agree. It's a very effective selling/recruiting strategy.
- rjsw 6y ago
  As a European, I think we are more to blame for Libya than the US.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I would hesitate to call anything concerning human actions a direct consequence if there is 25 years between the cause and its result. on edit: instead of repeating the same thing in each response berating me for not accepting that it was a consequence I will put the additional response here I didn't say it wasn't a consequence, but a direct consequence is generally understood as "an effect that is an immediate result of an event, incident, or occurrence." https://itlaw.wikia.org/wiki/Direct_consequence https://itlaw.wikia.org/wiki/Direct_consequence https://www.iadclexicon.org/direct-consequence/ https://www.iadclexicon.org/direct-consequence/ although it is often used for rhetorical effect in cases where the consequence is obviously not direct, I just avoid the usage unless I believe it is direct.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Well, they toppled the democratically elected leader and installed the last Shah who was more open to let western powers access their oil. The revolutionary forces 25 years later directly stated they felt justified to get rid of the Shah because of foreign intervention. Would you easily forgive a country that installed a Shah by toppling the democratically elected leader to get access to oil? Would you forget if you live day by day under a government directly installed by foreign actors? I don't think so, so I think it is a very safe bet in this case.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- grugagag 6y ago
  Why? Did anything change? Did the US hunger for oil and ‘exporting democracy’ mitigate in any sense? Of course it is all a consequence of these actions but we pretend we don’t see it.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    The Catch-22: can't chaperon the oil without the navy, can't cruise the navy without the oil. Could Athabasca and Green River provide a way for the US to stop riding the tiger above? (I would find this hypothesis more probable only after having seen more export capacity in the Gulf.)
mmsimanga 6y ago
I don't know enough on the Middle East to comment but I can comment on Africa, my continent. Some countries have been free of colonialists since the 1960s but you get politicians being elected because they "vow to continue fighting colonialism". Said politicians will paint themselves as revolutionaries. This works so for example politician will say we are free but the economy does not belong to us so I will continue our fight. IMHO this rhetoric muddies waters and to an extent absolves polititians of governance failures. It isn't clear if an issue is because of am alleged CIA sponsored coup or due to corruption and incompetence. Either way you likely to have very vocal and passionate people supporting both positions.
- macawfish 6y ago
  Are China / the global central banks not colonialist?
  - mmsimanga 6y ago
    Absolutely. Chinese definitely taking over the part of the world I am from. I suppose the difference is Chinese "seem" to stay out of any governance matters. You see them on the ground opening mines and businesses but you rarely see them stating that the African government is corrupt. From the new "revolutionary" politicians the banks are controlled by the former colonial governments. It's the new form of colonialism. Those are not my opinions but widely held views this end of the world.
    - raincom 6y ago
      I have a friend, who knows African politics--esp old French colonies pretty well. He also says same thing about West African CFA francs. I know enough monetary economics to see what is going on. Yes, West African CFA is pegged to Euro, now. Earlier, it was pegged to French francs. One disadvantage: countries don't have economic freedom/flexibility to finance public debt. If a country issues its own currency (not pegged to any Western currency), it has flexibility to issue/print money to finance public projects the way the Federal reserve in the USA is doing right now, by buying corporate bonds and treasury notes, etc. The flexibility that the US Federal reserve, the ECB, the Bank of Japan have, can't be exported to African central banks by the mere fact of having own currency; there should be demand for such currency. Today, every Chinese, every African, every Indian, every Latin American (almost 75% of the world population) wants to hold assets in USD, EUR, etc, but not in Kwachas (Zambian currency), not in Turkish Lira. If a currency is not hard pegged, if a currency is issued by a local sovereign central bank, then you can see run away inflation as you can witness in many African countries. This inflation is also bad, and that forces moneyed-locals to keep foreign currencies instead of local currency. The solution: good governance with local currency, not hard pegged to any Western currency. Without good governance, local currency will lead to bad outcomes.
anonunivgrad 6y ago
By this logic, everything is a direct consequence of what came before. Let’s just blame all of our problems on the Roman Empire. Even if that’s true on some scientific level, human institutions, human social practice, and the human mind itself, all rely on the idea of agency and responsibility. If you’re going to talk about whose “fault” it is, then you need to speak in those terms, not the mere chains of causation that science can talk about.
- sharadov 6y ago
  You obviously need an education on the Middle East, I suggest you read this book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman, and watch the movie "Persepolis". The Roman Empire existed thousands of years back, the Iranian evolution happened in 78-79, and the after affects are still in play.
  - anonunivgrad 6y ago
    “You obviously need an education” :eyeroll: Pretty fresh coming from someone who “obviously” missed the entire point of my post. No one claims that present wasn’t caused by the past. The question is who bears moral responsibility today for a regime that Iranians placed in power, that Iranians (a large enough chunk at least) continue to support, etc. Iranians are not uniquely automatons. They own their regime at least as much as anyone else, especially at this point. That US actions set a chain of events in motion does not absolve Iranians of everything they decided to do since. You are confusing causation and fault/responsibility. The US interventions, the Shah’s personal decisions, the ayatollahs’ decisions, the rise of Islam, the Persian Empire, the first humans who left Africa, are all causes of the current situation. But to determine who is at fault, who is responsible, is a very different question. Proximity in time is only a vague heuristic. It’s common in every day parlance to mix these concepts up. Legal systems have been confused about the distinction for thousands of years. But the distinction is very important to speaking sensibly about things.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      One thing to bear in mind in this discussion is that the U.S. did not simply exit stage left after the revolution in Iran. We've continued to isolate Iran both economically and militarily, especially with lavish support to Israel and even to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. It's impossible to say what kind of government Iran would have without American interventionism because it's never been free of American interventionism. It's sort of trivially true that responsibility for every facet of the Islamic Revolution in Iran can't be laid directly at the feet of the U.S. But, when you screw around with another country explicitly to steal their resources and exploit their people, it's silly to expect whatever violent resistance springs up to be rational and measured in every respect. They may even find it useful to heighten certain differences with the colonizing power to gain support from the people.
shirakawasuna 6y ago
The CIA did want Khomeini in power, as the alternative during the revolution was leftists / communists. They played an active role in assisting Khomeini's rise to power as part of opposing, "the reds".
jjcc 6y ago
Not only CIA but US/European governments also have the same problem. Two examples are Iraq war and bombing of Libya. The big difference is that the Iraq/Libya cases were partially intended to do good things which could get some support from certain voters. That's worse than CIA coups with strategical goals but turned out to have unintended consequences which will be correctly evaluated later to avoid the future mistakes. The actions with good intentions however are more deceptive because good intentions are often disguised self spiritual satisfactions so the real ground facts were less checked correctly. That's an theory that after tens of thousands deaths of Iraq war , the bombing of Libya could happen AGAIN with little objections because voters are fine with good intention of overthrowing evils, and with values (i.e. quasi religion) people are not likely to measure the magnitude of consequences. In terms of disaster, next version of Hitler is a human rights promoter.(Tony Blair?) Good intention is a way to circumvent "fool me once/twice" alert because politicians cheated in a such a good way not only themselves are cheated to enhance the deception but talking is so spiritually attractive that even non-religious people don't think about the history of ground truth associated with those beautiful words.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The good intention of overthrowing evils is something sold by Goebbels: > " The West is in danger. It makes no difference whether or not their governments and intellectuals realize it or not. > The German people, in any event, is unwilling to bow to this danger. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions we see the Jewish liquidation commandos, and behind them terror, the specter of mass starvation and complete anarchy. ... Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. ... We could see our venerable part of the world collapse, and bury in its ruins the ancient inheritance of the West. That is the danger we face today. > My second thesis: Only the German Reich and its allies are in the position to resist this danger. ... Bolshevism set ideological as well as military boundaries, which poses a danger to every nation. The world no longer has the choice between falling back into its old fragmentation or accepting a new order for Europe under Axis leadership. The only choice now is between living under Axis protection or in a Bolshevist Europe." https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36.htm https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36...

Jugurtha 6y ago

As it did with Iraq, Syria, Libya, and on and on. Ironically, this has pushed the world away from the U.S. towards Russia. Good job trying to further the interests of the U.S. by driving everyone away from it with chaos, and now a president drives the U.S. allies away from it. It didn't take long before Germany started getting closer to Russia. "Conclusive evidence", whether for Iraq or China, leads to a U.S. official dangling a vial of dried bat semen in front of the UN Security Council. It's exacerbated with reactions to events. The most recent of which is the "bounty" issue. Officials and journalists are outraged that Russian intelligence services allegedly gave money to Taliban to target U.S. troops. Anyone with half a brain would think: isn't this the same thing the CIA did by training Taliban on U.S. soil, with Special Forces, giving them RPGs, weapons and money to kill Soviet troops? I mean, the US/Taliban/Russia is almost a Vicky Cristina Barcelona triangle. The mere fact of these former intelligence officers and government officials being outraged is insulting. More on relations: Notice how Putin's speeches and interview differ from the usual U.S. diplomats and officials. U.S. officials and diplomats' speeches would piss off anyone with a functioning brain, it is the usual silly patriotism with wavy flags, exporting freedom and democracy, stars and stripes, and demagogy. No one can get away with that because the counter-examples are too many. This is bad salesmanship. In contrast, Putin takes the approach to explain the lay of the land, underplays his role, and takes the position of the underdog: "my job is to look for the Russian people, we're not as powerful as the U.S., look at what they did with all that power", and when people look, they agree. It's a very effective selling/recruiting strategy.

rjsw 6y ago
As a European, I think we are more to blame for Libya than the US.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

I would hesitate to call anything concerning human actions a direct consequence if there is 25 years between the cause and its result. on edit: instead of repeating the same thing in each response berating me for not accepting that it was a consequence I will put the additional response here I didn't say it wasn't a consequence, but a direct consequence is generally understood as "an effect that is an immediate result of an event, incident, or occurrence." https://itlaw.wikia.org/wiki/Direct_consequence https://itlaw.wikia.org/wiki/Direct_consequence https://www.iadclexicon.org/direct-consequence/ https://www.iadclexicon.org/direct-consequence/ although it is often used for rhetorical effect in cases where the consequence is obviously not direct, I just avoid the usage unless I believe it is direct.

raxxorrax 6y ago
Well, they toppled the democratically elected leader and installed the last Shah who was more open to let western powers access their oil. The revolutionary forces 25 years later directly stated they felt justified to get rid of the Shah because of foreign intervention. Would you easily forgive a country that installed a Shah by toppling the democratically elected leader to get access to oil? Would you forget if you live day by day under a government directly installed by foreign actors? I don't think so, so I think it is a very safe bet in this case.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
grugagag 6y ago
Why? Did anything change? Did the US hunger for oil and ‘exporting democracy’ mitigate in any sense? Of course it is all a consequence of these actions but we pretend we don’t see it.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The Catch-22: can't chaperon the oil without the navy, can't cruise the navy without the oil. Could Athabasca and Green River provide a way for the US to stop riding the tiger above? (I would find this hypothesis more probable only after having seen more export capacity in the Gulf.)

mmsimanga 6y ago

I don't know enough on the Middle East to comment but I can comment on Africa, my continent. Some countries have been free of colonialists since the 1960s but you get politicians being elected because they "vow to continue fighting colonialism". Said politicians will paint themselves as revolutionaries. This works so for example politician will say we are free but the economy does not belong to us so I will continue our fight. IMHO this rhetoric muddies waters and to an extent absolves polititians of governance failures. It isn't clear if an issue is because of am alleged CIA sponsored coup or due to corruption and incompetence. Either way you likely to have very vocal and passionate people supporting both positions.

macawfish 6y ago
Are China / the global central banks not colonialist?
- mmsimanga 6y ago
  Absolutely. Chinese definitely taking over the part of the world I am from. I suppose the difference is Chinese "seem" to stay out of any governance matters. You see them on the ground opening mines and businesses but you rarely see them stating that the African government is corrupt. From the new "revolutionary" politicians the banks are controlled by the former colonial governments. It's the new form of colonialism. Those are not my opinions but widely held views this end of the world.
  - raincom 6y ago
    I have a friend, who knows African politics--esp old French colonies pretty well. He also says same thing about West African CFA francs. I know enough monetary economics to see what is going on. Yes, West African CFA is pegged to Euro, now. Earlier, it was pegged to French francs. One disadvantage: countries don't have economic freedom/flexibility to finance public debt. If a country issues its own currency (not pegged to any Western currency), it has flexibility to issue/print money to finance public projects the way the Federal reserve in the USA is doing right now, by buying corporate bonds and treasury notes, etc. The flexibility that the US Federal reserve, the ECB, the Bank of Japan have, can't be exported to African central banks by the mere fact of having own currency; there should be demand for such currency. Today, every Chinese, every African, every Indian, every Latin American (almost 75% of the world population) wants to hold assets in USD, EUR, etc, but not in Kwachas (Zambian currency), not in Turkish Lira. If a currency is not hard pegged, if a currency is issued by a local sovereign central bank, then you can see run away inflation as you can witness in many African countries. This inflation is also bad, and that forces moneyed-locals to keep foreign currencies instead of local currency. The solution: good governance with local currency, not hard pegged to any Western currency. Without good governance, local currency will lead to bad outcomes.

anonunivgrad 6y ago

By this logic, everything is a direct consequence of what came before. Let’s just blame all of our problems on the Roman Empire. Even if that’s true on some scientific level, human institutions, human social practice, and the human mind itself, all rely on the idea of agency and responsibility. If you’re going to talk about whose “fault” it is, then you need to speak in those terms, not the mere chains of causation that science can talk about.

sharadov 6y ago
You obviously need an education on the Middle East, I suggest you read this book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman, and watch the movie "Persepolis". The Roman Empire existed thousands of years back, the Iranian evolution happened in 78-79, and the after affects are still in play.
- anonunivgrad 6y ago
  “You obviously need an education” :eyeroll: Pretty fresh coming from someone who “obviously” missed the entire point of my post. No one claims that present wasn’t caused by the past. The question is who bears moral responsibility today for a regime that Iranians placed in power, that Iranians (a large enough chunk at least) continue to support, etc. Iranians are not uniquely automatons. They own their regime at least as much as anyone else, especially at this point. That US actions set a chain of events in motion does not absolve Iranians of everything they decided to do since. You are confusing causation and fault/responsibility. The US interventions, the Shah’s personal decisions, the ayatollahs’ decisions, the rise of Islam, the Persian Empire, the first humans who left Africa, are all causes of the current situation. But to determine who is at fault, who is responsible, is a very different question. Proximity in time is only a vague heuristic. It’s common in every day parlance to mix these concepts up. Legal systems have been confused about the distinction for thousands of years. But the distinction is very important to speaking sensibly about things.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    One thing to bear in mind in this discussion is that the U.S. did not simply exit stage left after the revolution in Iran. We've continued to isolate Iran both economically and militarily, especially with lavish support to Israel and even to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. It's impossible to say what kind of government Iran would have without American interventionism because it's never been free of American interventionism. It's sort of trivially true that responsibility for every facet of the Islamic Revolution in Iran can't be laid directly at the feet of the U.S. But, when you screw around with another country explicitly to steal their resources and exploit their people, it's silly to expect whatever violent resistance springs up to be rational and measured in every respect. They may even find it useful to heighten certain differences with the colonizing power to gain support from the people.

shirakawasuna 6y ago

The CIA did want Khomeini in power, as the alternative during the revolution was leftists / communists. They played an active role in assisting Khomeini's rise to power as part of opposing, "the reds".

jjcc 6y ago

Not only CIA but US/European governments also have the same problem. Two examples are Iraq war and bombing of Libya. The big difference is that the Iraq/Libya cases were partially intended to do good things which could get some support from certain voters. That's worse than CIA coups with strategical goals but turned out to have unintended consequences which will be correctly evaluated later to avoid the future mistakes. The actions with good intentions however are more deceptive because good intentions are often disguised self spiritual satisfactions so the real ground facts were less checked correctly. That's an theory that after tens of thousands deaths of Iraq war , the bombing of Libya could happen AGAIN with little objections because voters are fine with good intention of overthrowing evils, and with values (i.e. quasi religion) people are not likely to measure the magnitude of consequences. In terms of disaster, next version of Hitler is a human rights promoter.(Tony Blair?) Good intention is a way to circumvent "fool me once/twice" alert because politicians cheated in a such a good way not only themselves are cheated to enhance the deception but talking is so spiritually attractive that even non-religious people don't think about the history of ground truth associated with those beautiful words.

082349872349872 6y ago
The good intention of overthrowing evils is something sold by Goebbels: > " The West is in danger. It makes no difference whether or not their governments and intellectuals realize it or not. > The German people, in any event, is unwilling to bow to this danger. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions we see the Jewish liquidation commandos, and behind them terror, the specter of mass starvation and complete anarchy. ... Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. ... We could see our venerable part of the world collapse, and bury in its ruins the ancient inheritance of the West. That is the danger we face today. > My second thesis: Only the German Reich and its allies are in the position to resist this danger. ... Bolshevism set ideological as well as military boundaries, which poses a danger to every nation. The world no longer has the choice between falling back into its old fragmentation or accepting a new order for Europe under Axis leadership. The only choice now is between living under Axis protection or in a Bolshevist Europe." https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36.htm https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36...