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[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 04:13:22PM -0400, Scott Boggs wrote:
> >This whole thing with Iran is giving me fits.
> 
> Agreed. It was scary to hear Bush's voice talking about it--he had that same
> reved up tone as before the Iraq invasion.

Yeah, it's scary, all right. Not a good situation at all, and it looks
like Bush and Co. are bent on doing the worst possible things with it.
Of course, given that a supposedly American-friendly majority lets
itself be ruled by a vocal and very crazy minority of religious zealots
and thugs, maybe there really isn't a choice in the matter.
 
> Our nation building campaign that put the Shah of Iran in place is in
> part the basis of this. As was our support of Saddam Hussein for a few
> decades, and the current nation building catastrophe in Iraq...

Erm, we didn't put the Shah in place. CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt almost
singlehandedly knocked Mossadeq out of office when he nationalized the
oil industry and starting flirting with the Soviets, but Iran has had
Shahs for centuries. Just FYI. "All the Shah's Men" is a very
interesting book on the topic, FWIW, as is the recent book from Ken
Pollack on Iran.

Anyone have any recommendations for good books on Cold War realpolitik?
I, for one, can see why the US and UK might have supported a thug like
Pahlavi, if he was a force for modernization and against the clerics.
Maybe some others here are more in favor of Islamic theocracy. 

> If karma just means 'cause and effect', then this is seems like karma,
> as in bad karma.

Also known, and more appropriately, as "blowback". 

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