How do you think our world would be different if...

[ck4829]

There was no Operation Ajax in Iran to depose the Democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh and allow the tyrannical Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to consolidate power, which in itself fueled the Islamic Revolution in Iran?

There was no arming of Mujahideen in Afghanistan (Who later became the Taliban) to battle and eventually massacre the religiously moderate Soviet friendly government in that country?

There was no Reagan Administration alliance with Saddam Hussein?

There was no arming of Iranians during the Reagan Administration which secretly gave the profits from the sales to Contras?

If these events didn't happen, how do you think the world would be different?

[zeemike]

1. You mean if Carter would have won a second term

I don't know but we can speculate.
That the repugs would have given up on there southern strategies and turned moderate and we would have had no powerful RW Fundies to deal with?
Peace in the Middle East? No one could tell but I think we would have had a shot at at least.

[beam me up scottie]

2. That's exactly what I was thinking.

Jimmy Carter is one of the christians I most respect and admire.

Down here, the southern baptists have never forgiven him for telling them where to stick their dogma.



There's no way to know, but we certainly wouldn't be where we are now.

[zeemike]

3. And we may have been more respected in the world

And perhaps no GHW bush and Saddam not have invaded Kuwait and no military bases in Saudi Arabia, No Osama and no 911...it could go on and on.

[beam me up scottie]

4. We could have shelved our own hate and helped the people who needed it most.

The resources we could have dedicated to researching AIDS, getting medicine to African countries before it became an epidemic...

[beam me up scottie]

5. The journalist on BBC wouldn't be exclaiming "And President Bush slept through the whole thing!"

in an incredulous voice right now.

[dave_p]

6. Very good question

It'd be a VERY different world. And the question really raises the issue of how much present regional trends are home-grown, and how much they're consequences of US policy.

Leaving aside the 1980s Iran-Iraq backing, which was of lesser consequence, US action's been fundamental to shaping the rise of Islamism when indigenous political development in Muslim countries was leading in entirely different directions.

Iran in 1953 was only the most blatant example of a modernising nationalist movement (a democratic one too, in that case) being destroyed to protect immediate western economic or strategic assets.

Throughout the region, regimes and parties that offered peoples a secular alternative to fundamentalism have found themselves undermined by US, British or Israeli policy.

This is the Middle East the West made, a region in which religion has been perverted for short-term political uses and avenues to political advance shut off. The whole world's paying the cost, and Muslims most of all.