[Discussion] Muammar Gaddafi | The Truth Behind The Smokescreen
- Thread starter Waindo
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chopstickchakra
Active member
Castro also greatly improved Cuba from what it was when ran by American backed Bautista(sp?) when he took power and built a lot of hospitals and schools. But he still did oppressive things as well. It's all about perspective and knowing it's not just one way or the other.
Have you ever noticed that East Asia, another part of the world that Europeans meddled around with at some point in history, is nowhere near as unstable as the Middle East and Africa? Ever wondered why that is? Let me give you my 2 cents.
The fundamental problem with the Middle East and a significant part of Africa is that they artificial and imperial constructs to begin with. Take the states we once knew as Syria and Iraq for example - are you aware that the borders of those lands were not established by the native people there (look up Sykes-Picot as I don't want to write a wall of text no one will read)?
The Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds in that area of the world were once part of the Ottoman empire, as you might know. A lesser known fact is that the Ottoman empire was comprised of various provinces that had varying degrees of autonomy. And those provinces more or less corresponded to the lands of the various sub-groups or communities.
Contrast that to Iraq and Syria as we knew it where Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were thrown into an centralized state and told to distribute political power and economic resources between themselves fairly. Compound that with the other elephant in the room - the division of the Kurdish people between the nation-states in that region.
And the fact that the various ethno-religious groups there were at each other's throats long before Saddam Hussein (who the Shiites despised and whom the Kurds saw as a genocidal murderer, no matter how much he was loved by the Sunni Arabs) and Assad (who has always been despised by the Sunnis there) becomes far less surprising, don't you think?
This is not to say that the toppling of those strongmen was not an obvious recipe for disaster (and it probably was an orchestrated one on the part of the Neocons, as you suspect). What I am trying to do is to get you to think about why say Iran is far less susceptible to exploitation than most other countries in that region.
In Iran, Persian language speaking Shiites make up an almost absolute majority of their country. Tribal based civil strife isn't going to work in Iran for the simple reason that there is really only one relevant tribe there.
If you don't want to fall victim to the 'divide and conquer' game the only permanent solution is to get rid of the divisions in your society. And the only realistic way to do that (bar genocide of competing tribal groups) is to destroy and create anew the region. Give the Kurds their own state, let the Shiites go their own way, and establish your Sunni Arab version of Iran.
That is what I would do if I were you guys, anyway. Trouble of course is that the people in that region (with the sole exception of the Kurds) are much more interested in selling their brands of sectarian ideology to each other, or subordinating each other, than coming up with long-term solutions to their own problems.
chopstickchakra
Active member
Economic oppression and reliance isn't really the same thing as oppression in the ways leaders use it to run countries. The US doesn't actually hold direct authority over those countries so they can't actually "oppress" them in the sense of the word so they have to use economic sanctions and trade agreements to influence those countries to operate in a way that is more fiscally beneficial to the US then the countries hosting the work. And it's all perspective, to the unaffected that see none of the benefit they may see them as oppressive, to the ones involved it may seem as though their country is being brought to a new way. Were the industrialists who drug those holding on to heritage oppressive for bringing them all to a more productive time? The journey wasn't great with a lot of people left behind feeling as though they were being used but in the end something arguably better came from it. It's all perspective and what side of the fence you feel is giving the most truthful information.