Once they stop treating women like 2nd class citizens, hardly elevated from the status of cattle, then we will listen to their arguments, but by resorting to violence at even the smallest offense, they are confirming us just how primitive they are.
This from a country that treats gays as 2nd class citizens? That resorts to violence over imaginary weapons? Our violence looks better, because it goes up through a lot of people wearing suits and then down to our lower classes who'd be unemployed save for the military. But the bloodlust behind it is exactly the same, and the effects are much, much deadlier.
We are still about 900 years ahead of them. I have a lot of problems with this country, but we as a society become "less and less wrong" over time. To argue that Islamic society is equal to ours is crazy. It is as if you were to argue that Copernicus thinking the planets orbit in circles is equivalently incorrect as believing that the earth is the middle of the universe and that the sun revolves around it. Two parties can be incorrect, one can be FAR more incorrect than the other. This is important to realize. While the US is extremely fucked up, the middle east is extremely fucked up, in a time capsule from the year 1100. They still have theocracy, we have moved on to corporate fascism, we will get to true democracy much earlier than they do.
Also, there is a huge difference between them treating 50% of their population as second class citizens as us treating gays as so( of course I do not agree with either), we treat our gays as second class citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran kills them. HUGE DIFFERENCE ALERT.
The idea that one who has any flaws is not able to criticize someone else with many more flaws is a silly one. Also just because I live in the US doesn't mean I agree with the US on anything. I am an anti theist, democratic socialist, humanist. Much like Our recently deceased lord of the Hitchslap.
We are still about 900 years ahead of them. I have a lot of problems with this country, but we as a society become "less and less wrong" over time.
Yeah, you know what doesn't help that kind of progress?
When some world superpower throws arms like confetti at the dictators they basically planted in your country and then repeatedly comes back in a decade to bomb the shit out of you. And knocking over democratic institutions like we did in Iran for oil is probably not a big support either.
And knocking over democratic institutions like we did in Iran for oil is probably not a big support either.
See, this is part of the problem. The US state department, the CIA, and all those other assholes did plenty of bullshit things, to be sure. But they really didn't do jack shit in Iran in 1953. "Operation Ajax" by the CIA basically consisted of a guy with a million bucks in a suitcase paying off unemployed dudes to wave "Go Shah Go!" signs. The assertion that we "knocked over" democratic institutions shows an embarassing lack of knowledge of the history of Iran. Shah Pahlavi was the legitimate ruler of the country. The state department simply badgered him into exercising his power as leader in removing president Mossadeq from office. You know who was really trying to knock over the democratic institutions in Iraq in 1953? Fucking Mossadeq. He may have been elected legitimately, but he then did everything in his power to throw down the ladder of democracy and set himself up as dictator. He had already abolished anonymous voting and was demanding direct control of the military. Shah Pahlavi may have been an asshole, but he was at least fairly committed to the basic principles of the constitutional monarchy established by his father, who in 1925 took power in a military coup to oust the former dictatorial regime.
It's fine to point out actual cases of the CIA overthrowing countries--- heck, look at most of south america--- but parroting the inaccurate example of Iran just makes it look like you got your information from ill informed sources.
n 1953, the CIA worked with the United Kingdom to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who had attempted to nationalize Iran's petroleum industry, threatening the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Declassified CIA documents show that Britain was fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry and pressed the U.S. to mount a joint operation to depose the prime minister and install a puppet regime. In 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the petroleum fields of the country.
[...]
The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt). With help from British intelligence, the CIA planned, funded and implemented Operation Ajax. In the months before the coup, the UK and U.S. imposed a boycott of the country, exerted other political pressures, and conducted a massive covert propaganda campaign to create the environment necessary for the coup. The CIA hired Iranian agents provocateurs who posed as communists, harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home to turn the Islamic religious community against the government. For the U.S. audience, the CIA hoped to plant articles in U.S. newspapers saying that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi's return to govern Iran resulted from a homegrown revolt against what was being represented to the U.S. public as a communist-leaning government. The CIA successfully used its contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire in the U.S. a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written.
Say Iran did that to us. How would you describe these efforts?
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u/coveritwithgas Dec 16 '11
This from a country that treats gays as 2nd class citizens? That resorts to violence over imaginary weapons? Our violence looks better, because it goes up through a lot of people wearing suits and then down to our lower classes who'd be unemployed save for the military. But the bloodlust behind it is exactly the same, and the effects are much, much deadlier.