Israel / Hamas Conflict in the West Bank

[TheGlyphstone]

Oh there is a reason the Iranian forces are so damn antagonistic now huh?  The folks the CIA trained taught them how to be utter dicks.

From what I've read the Shah's rule was pretty awful for your average Iranian all by itself - secret police,death squads, all the usual dictator playbook moves. I always thought it was just a legacy of our supporting him during/after the revolution but If the CIA/MI5 was actually responsible for putting him there in the first place, that would indeed go a long way towards explaining the roots of Iranian resentment towards the West.

It was one of my long-running curiosities for alternate histories, the what-if of a world where we chose principles over McCarthyism and supported the revolution instead of the Shah with the possible outcome of a genuine ally to help stabilize the Middle East instead of the transactional/client-state relationships we have now. But that takes a big hit now that I know we made that revolution necessary in the first place...

I have to admit, I looked that one up myself.  I hadn't ever questioned why certain dictatorships were called 'Banana republics'.

Weirdly appropriate, considering most of the US involvement in the Middle East (both diplomatic and military) is around a single product the countries in that region export.

I actually wrote an essay in college about this - the legacy of the British East India Company, United Fruit, and their peers being the ancestors of the extraterritorial megacorporations that feature so heavily in cyberpunk stories. 

[Callie Del Noire]

From what I've read the Shah's rule was pretty awful for your average Iranian all by itself - secret police,death squads, all the usual dictator playbook moves. I always thought it was just a legacy of our supporting him during/after the revolution but If the CIA/MI5 was actually responsible for putting him there in the first place, that would indeed go a long way towards explaining the roots of Iranian resentment towards the West.

It was one of my long-running curiosities for alternate histories, the what-if of a world where we chose principles over McCarthyism and supported the revolution instead of the Shah with the possible outcome of a genuine ally to help stabilize the Middle East instead of the transactional/client-state relationships we have now. But that takes a big hit now that I know we made that revolution necessary in the first place...

Kinda hard to forget that grandada wound up hanging from a street light when every family on the block shared the same cultural baggage.

[TheGlyphstone]

Basically, yeah. Kinda like how at least 75% of South America hates us for our support of the various right-wing tyrants who brutalized them during the Cold War.

Im remembering a co worker from an old job who said to me 'I wish so many countries didnt dislike the US'. What i wish I had said at the time would be 'I wish so many countries didn't have legitimate reasons to dislike us'. People have long memories, and cultures have even longer ones.

[Oniya]

I actually wrote an essay in college about this - the legacy of the British East India Company, United Fruit, and their peers being the ancestors of the extraterritorial megacorporations that feature so heavily in cyberpunk stories.

You'll be amused to know that this morning, as Little Oni was getting up, I said 'So, I've found out why we call certain dictatorships "banana republics"' - and without missing a beat she says 'Because they were taken over by a militarized fruit company?'

Chip off the ol' StoreHouse.

[TheGlyphstone]

Indeed she is.

[JD]

From what I've read the Shah's rule was pretty awful for your average Iranian all by itself - secret police,death squads, all the usual dictator playbook moves. I always thought it was just a legacy of our supporting him during/after the revolution but If the CIA/MI5 was actually responsible for putting him there in the first place, that would indeed go a long way towards explaining the roots of Iranian resentment towards the West.

It was one of my long-running curiosities for alternate histories, the what-if of a world where we chose principles over McCarthyism and supported the revolution instead of the Shah with the possible outcome of a genuine ally to help stabilize the Middle East instead of the transactional/client-state relationships we have now. But that takes a big hit now that I know we made that revolution necessary in the first place...

I actually wrote an essay in college about this - the legacy of the British East India Company, United Fruit, and their peers being the ancestors of the extraterritorial megacorporations that feature so heavily in cyberpunk stories.

CIA and MI6. MI5 = UK's FBI. MI6/SIS = UK's CIA.

Re life under the Shah, it depends which Iranian you ask. Cons: If you were a dissident or a cleric critical of the regime, you were jailed, tortured, or disappeared by SAVAK (who were, in fact, trained by CIA). Pros: they had a working infrastructure, a decent economy (by ME standards at the time), good schools with a measure of academic freedom, women's lib, and (usually) faced only cultural harassment if you were a minority--unless you were Baha'i. People think of Iran as a Shia monolith, but it's a hodgepodge of Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Sunnis.

Iran is complicated, and its people have been consistently shafted by foreign governments and their own since 1953.

Also, I feel like we're getting off topic. I'm going to start a thread, call it Deconfliction or Banana Republic or something, so as not to take the focus off of Gaza, and we can do history etc. there. I don't want to take attention away from Gaza.

[TheGlyphstone]

No, that's fair. At best, it's tangentially related with Israel being the proxy client-state we got instead, with all the attendant problems that have followed.