The Middle East - Is It Our Own Fault? (Part 1)

The Shah of Iran with  Jimmy Carter

With the Arab nations in the Middle East going bonkers over a stupid film trailer that portrays Muhammad, one would wonder if all this is our own fault?  Is the U.S. to blame for these idiotic acts of violence?  Well I have asked this question to myself and I have come up with the answer of YES.  You read that correctly, the answer is YES.  In the past 33 years, the United States has helped greatly in the destabilization of the Middle East.  Let me tell you how I came up with this answer.  Let's go back to 1979, then President Jimmy Carter and his administration did nothing to help when Iranian Revolutionaries overthrew The Shah Of Iran, Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī.  Earlier in October of 1977, militant anti-Shah demonstrations of a few hundred started after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini's son Mostafa.  The Shah saw his country being divided and put the hammer down on anyone who questioned his regime.  A year later strikes were paralyzing the country, and in early December a "total of 6 to 9 million", more than 10% of the country marched against the Shah throughout Iran.  Shortly after, the Shah vacated his position as the ruler of Iran and fled to France.  The world wondered who would take the Shah's place?  It was the Ayatollah Khomeini, a radical cleric who hated the United States.  Not very long after he took power, Americans were taken hostage and Iran was no longer an ally to the U.S..

Let's move to Afghanistan where between 1979 and 1989 the Afghan people fought a war with the powerful Soviet Union.  All was lost until the U.S. stepped in and provided the Afghan's rocket launchers and other weapons to combat the Soviet's.  Within a few years the tide of the war had turned and the Soviets high tailed it back home with their tails between their legs.  It appeared that the U.S. had a strategic ally in the Middle East.  Not!  With the war over, the Afghan's asked us for help to rebuild their country.   President George H. Bush and his administration turned their backs and snubbed the Afghan's.  Afghanistan was no longer an ally of America.  This was followed by the 1990s Afghan Civil War, the rise and fall of the Taliban government and the present war we are involved in today.  The decades of war made Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country, including the largest producer of refugees and asylum seekers. While the international community is rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan, terrorist groups such as the Haqqani Network and Hezbi Islam are actively involved in a nationwide Taliban-led insurgency, which includes hundreds of assassinations and suicide attacks.  According to the United Nations, the insurgents were responsible for 80% of civilian casualties in 2011 and 2012.

Tomorrow, we will look at the U.S. involvement with the destabilization of Iraq and Egypt.