This "unreasonable demand" by israel is actually quite reasonable and in perfect compliance with international law. Imagine if the British Conservative party was conducting terror bombing in Ireland.

China would not accept a political group in Vietnam that could and did make military or paramilitary raids across the border onto Chinese territory and was beyond the effective control of Hanoi. Mexico would not accept it from Guatemala and so on. Hezbollah is not under Lebanese government control at present yet Beirut is legally responsible for any of Hezbollah's actions. And as an agent of Syrian and Iranian influence ,it undermines Lebanese sovereignty in yet another manner.

Why the scare quotes around "unreasonable demand" when it appears nowhere in the linked article?

All benefit of the doubt is suspended for the duration... 

MY point, by the way, was their "Shock and Awe" campaign was as successful at ending a threat as ours was.

"MY point, by the way, was their "Shock and Awe" campaign was as successful at ending a threat as ours was."

Exactly. And the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will be just as successful as their last endeavor there.

Israel can bomb the country, its infrasturcture, and its innocent civilians into oblivion, but they will not succeed in militarily defeating Hezbollah using those tactics. What they are succeeding in doing is showing the world once again that they have no interest in peace and stability in the region. 

You jab Israel as having no interest in peace, yet it was Lebanon/Hizballah who spent the last 6 years lobbing missiles into Israel and killing Israelis in Israel. It is Iran and Syria that are feeding Hizballah with arms for this very purpose, and when Israel decides enough is enough and sets out to protect their boarders they are the ones not for peace? And yes, sadly, civilians are being killed, but your comment is absurd--Israel is not targetting civilians nor is their goal to bomb them into oblivion. They are aiming to destroy Hizballah, their weapons, and the infastructure that supports the continued war making in southern Lebanon. If Lebanon did not actively support Hizballah as a means of military force antagonizing and threatening the saftey of their boarder nations Lebanon would not be in this predicament.

People can mock Israel's efforts at peace, but the bottomline is that you cannot make peace with terrorists who have a singular goal to see your destruction. And this is the sort of groups Lebanon, Syria, and Iran are supporting.

Efforts for peace that consist of same military tactics that brought them to this pass in the first place.

Reminds me of integration efforts 'round these parts.

So, the root cause of the problem is the Arab nations never accepted the institution of the state of Israel as valid. They never agreed they gave up that land. Israel, on the other hand, refused to leave for mystic reasons. They refuse to give up the land. Both sides can hurt the other; neither can destroy the other...Israel is in too close proximity to its enemies for that nuclear arsenal to be a credible threat. Israel can't absorb Palestine and remain a Jewish nation and can't keep occupying Palestine because they will not stop.

What next? I got my popcorn...

If the United States can give, sell, lend-lease weapons to Israel I fail to see why the Iranians, Syrians or anyone else can't provide weapons to Hizballah. I have never read or heard of a law, decree or resolution that says only the United States and its allies can have a monopoly on weapons of violence.

Your argument reminds me of that old Richard Pryor routine about the two whites cops going into a black bar looking for someone named Jesse. Nobody in the bar gives up any information and the cops begin acting in a menacing and threatening manner until one of the bar patrons says out loud, "We got some guns in here too, motherfuckers." The cops chilled out after that warning.

Scare quotes were for the underlying implication that Israel is doing something that any other great or even middle power in the same situation would not ( whether they are doing it well is another, separate, question).

The root cause is the unwilingness to permanently accept Israel's existence under any terms ( temporarily and tactical acceptance for reasons of state, yes). The Israelis are also not inclined to accept a fully-functional Palestinian state either but of the two sides the Israelis are closer to that acceptance point.

When you consider that the Franco-German dispute over Alsace-Lorraine, which was not an existential question like the one we are discussing, lasted from the reign of Louis XIV to the finality of 1945 it gives some idea of the likelihood of settling this issue by diplomatic means. 

"Israel is in too close proximity to its enemies for that nuclear arsenal to be a credible threat."

As a first strike yes. As retaliatory deterrent against neighboring states it has worked quite well which is why you have not seen any grand Arab coalition armies trying to repeat the Yom Kippur War.

"What next? I got my popcorn..."

My guess is that eventually, an Islamist terror group will elude Israeli countermeasures and pull off a catastrophic attack that leaves thousands or tens of thousands dead. After which Israel will ethnically cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, in turn destabilizing Lebanon and Jordan, and attack Syria  basically sending the region into complete chaos

"If the United States can give, sell, lend-lease weapons to Israel I fail to see why the Iranians, Syrians or anyone else can't provide weapons to Hizballah"

Because Hezbollah is not a state. Selling arms to the Lebanese Army is ok, selling them to a non-state group within Lebanon is not, at least according to customary international law. Yes, that gets violated all the time by everyone but it is the official yardstick for keeping track of right and wrong when it comes time to decide whether the use of military force is legitimate or not.

"Hizbollah has no more intention of disarming itself than did the Irgun or Stern Gang"

Bingo ! Hence Israel's determination to create a situation where the international community forces Hezbollah's disarmament by making legally justifiable attacks on the least culpable but legally most responsible party ( Lebanese state) until the UN/NATO etc. intervenes. Why will they intervene in Israel's favor ? Not for love of Israel but because they operate by the same system of rules upholding sovereign state authority.

A highly risky strategy BTW. Israel would have been better off, strategically speaking, in attacking Syria but they would not be on solid legal ground as Hezbollah isn't attacking Israel from Syria and while Syria is arming Hezbollah whether that is proven to the level of casus belli is debatable. No arguing about the geographic location of rocket attacks, that's simply a fact and ample casus belli.

My guess is that eventually, an Islamist terror group will elude Israeli countermeasures and pull off a catastrophic attack that leaves thousands or tens of thousands dead. After which Israel will ethnically cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, in turn destabilizing Lebanon and Jordan, and attack Syria  basically sending the region into complete chaos

Yup.  Except I don't think it will be (or take) tens of thousands.

No matter what they say both sides are committed...they'll run right off the cliff in the name of saying pretty much the same thing in their particular way.

The chief problem, IMHO, is that all the parties to the dispute and I do mean all of the parties including the United States, Britain, France and the former Soviet Union, want to be right all the time and on every question in the dispute. Israelis and their supporters want to keep honking about recognizing Israel's right to exist as if Israel could actually have been brought into existence without force of arms and the theft (and theft is the operative word) of lands owned by Palestinians.

It is absurd for anyone with sense to come in out of the rain to expect that the Palestinians would just roll over and accept this state of affairs without being offered some proximate compensation for their losses. Since the Palestinians have never really been offered to be made whole (The deal Bill Clinton tried to force Arafat to accept was ridiculous and it is dishonest in the extreme to argue otherwise.) some of them are going to challenge Israel's right to exist in its current status.

For Israelis and Jews throughout the world to continually point out the anti-Semitism of many Arabs is pointless. Yes, many of them are anti-Semites and have been for generations but given their feelings why would anyone with common sense think that they could take the Palestinians' land and establish a Jewish state and not engender resistence and anger on the part of the Arabs. Their feelings about Jews is also to some degree irrelevant. It may be a moral failing but it does not entitle anyone to take their land and, foolishly, expect them to accept it and, now, want to send my children and their friends to die in an endless war to support the inherent folly of the initial act.

It would have been far better and more justified to carve out parts of Germany, Austria and Poland to create a Jewish state to compensate for the much more virulent and vicious anti-Semitism of Europe. The Nazis and their aliies, friends and sympathizers in Austria, Poland, France, Italy and eastern Europe killed at least one-third of the world's Jews. If the Nazis had won the war they intended to murder every Jew in the world. (Anyone who thinks the Holocaust did not happen or is an exaggeration has stepped over a moral line.)

The siege mentality of the Israelis has become so pronounced that their government is now proposing and passing "racialist" laws as a means to try to ensure that Jews remain the majority citizens of Israel. In 2003, for example, Israel passed a law declaring that Palestinians who married Israelis could not become citizens. Laws of this type almost invite comparison between Israel and the actions of the Nazis who passed laws forbidding Germans, i.e., Aryans from marrying Jews.

My point is that this situation is out of hand. We are on the brink of World War III (Although the American neocons believe it would be World War IV because in their view the Cold War was the third world war.) and nobody, especially our own government, seems to have a clue as to what needs to be done. We don't learn much from history although pundits are quite fond of quoting George Santayana's warning about the penalty for not remembering the past. Events can always overtake us and carry all of us much further than we had planned or dared.

The bombardment and destruction of Lebanon will not buy peace for Israel in this world. The thinly veiled threats by our government to jack up the Iranians and other recalcitrant governments in the Middle East and elsewhere sounds like a demented opium dream that will only result in more killing and destruction. Lots of folks in this country and Israel think that our trump card in this game will be nuclear weapons. We'll threaten to use them to finally cow the Arabs and others into submission. The problem, as I see it, is that folks ain't taking ass whippings any more no matter how many weapons the Threateners and Deciders have in their arsenals.

Under the rules of global capitalism it is entirely okay to sell weapons to Hezbollah if they have the money to buy them. Sixty percent of the armaments sold in the world are sold or manufactured by U.S. companies. If we can make and sell guns to anyone we please what makes you think other entrepreneurs are not looking for an opportunity to grab their main chance too? If making money from selling guns is good for the goose, then it must be good for the gander, too.

I live in a state where individuals can legally buy dozens of handguns every month. Many of these buyers purchase these guns and drive into a bordering state that has much stricter gun control laws where they sell these handguns on the streets. If we allow Americans to buy as many guns as they want then what is the basis of our effort to deny guns to Hezbollah other than to establish a monopoly on weapons of violence?

"We got some guns in here too, motherfuckers."

That's the only language some folks understand.

Here in the West the spin is so constant about "terrorism" folks have lost the ability to think clearly about the issue. I would define preemptive war as terrorism, just as I would define the invasion and occupation of someone else's land as terrorism. I would define building settlements in occupied land as terrorism. And building a wall around an entire people as a form of genocide. But folks like Anonymous and Time-for Iran-Syria-etc. above view such actions as politically and morally justified because they see them as protecting Western economic, religious, and cultural interests.

Frankly, I don't give a fuck for the murders on either side. Nevertheless, I think it is important to examine the roots causes of this conflict. P6 touched on this above when he referred to Israel's "mystic reasons" for taking the land. We should never forget their claim is "biblical." But what happens if "god" is removed from the argument? What happens then to their claim the land belongs to them?

The problem is that if you take the land by a gun then you have to hold onto the land with a gun because the people who you took the land from will surely come back with guns, too. This is the lesson they have learned from you. I don't care for any of the killing on either side for any reason but it is absurd to argue that Hezbollah does not have a right to procure weapons.

"If we allow Americans to buy as many guns as they want then what is the basis of our effort to deny guns to Hezbollah other than to establish a monopoly on weapons of violence? "

International Law, which all states overtly support ( no matter how much or how often they may cheat covertly and regardless of the nature of the regime) because it undergirds state sovereignty and the state having a monopoly of the legal use of force on its territory. It's why Coke and Pepsi ( at present anyway) do not have their own air force or nuclear weapons.

A standard that is eroding in practice ( by capitalism as you accurately pointed out, though not only capitalism) but still, at this point in time, the legal standard as nation-states recognize such claims amongst themselves.

If all this sounds ridiculous at times to you...well...I agree. There are parts of IL that have passed, IMHO, their historical time, but so far these rules have not been formally replaced or their obsolescence admitted by great powers or bodies like the UN. This is partly why Iran and North Korea are so friendless - there are lots of states that would prefer to support them against the U.S. but the actions by Iran and the DPRK are so against "the rules" that so many other states rely on for their own power that they feel constrained to tepidly support the U.S. so as not to allow bad precedents.

International Law, which all states overtly support ( no matter how much or how often they may cheat covertly and regardless of the nature of the regime) because it undergirds state sovereignty and the state having a monopoly of the legal use of force on its territory. It's why Coke and Pepsi ( at present anyway) do not have their own air force or nuclear weapons.

It can be persuasively argued that the reason Coke and Pepsi do not have their own air force or nuclear weapons is because that role is fulfilled by our own government. Look at the role of the CIA and other government agencies in the overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala in 1954 on behalf of the United Fruit Company. There are other examples I could provide such as Chile and the murder of Salvador Allende.

This is partly why Iran and North Korea are so friendless - there are lots of states that would prefer to support them against the U.S. but the actions by Iran and the DPRK are so against "the rules" that so many other states rely on for their own power that they feel constrained to tepidly support the U.S. so as not to allow bad precedents.

I'm a little confused here. What rules are you referring to? The rules regarding nuclear proliferation? Why is it okay for the U.S. to wink at India's and Pakistan's clear violations of these laws while throwing a hissy fit about North Korea and Iran. Under the terms of the treaty Iran signed it clearly has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. And North Korea's test firings of missles seems standard for a world in which the U.S. and the Brits, for example, test fire missles every week.

"Frankly, I don't give a fuck for the murders on either side."

I meant to say murderers. I've learned my efforts at correcting typos will cause the posts to jump out of sequence.

I find the international law argument to be rather disingenuous. Israel has ignored international law for decades and yet it is not not a pariah in the eyes of most Western nations. Also, those who have the power reject such laws when it's convenient to do so, i.e. the US in its invasion of other nations and its overthrow or assassination of democractically elected leaders like Salvador Allende, Patrice Lumumba, etc.

The argument that corporations do not have access to private armies or militias is also false. Ever heard of the United Fruit Company? When corporations want to resort to violence to achieve their objectives they hire mercenaries or use the CIA. They may not have an air force or nuclear weapons as Anonymous says, but they haven't needed either, yet, to get the results they want.

This scenario seems plausible because the people who are fighting Israeli occupation of their lands are much more resourceful and intelligent than the Israelis have been led to believe. The Israelis are too confident of their military superiority and what they don't understand is that this struggle will go to the most persistent and resourceful. The Palestinians and Lebonese have had to learn how to be persistent and resourceful. They pretty know that they are own their own.

"The Israelis are too confident of their military superiority and what they don't understand is that this struggle will go to the most persistent and resourceful."

The neocon-driven US regime also has fallen into the trap of believing superior military power means easy victory. Neither the US nor Israel are facing conventional adversaries. Unlike the enemies of the Cold War era, the current forces fighting in Lebanon and Iraq don't give a damn about nuclear arsenals or high tech weaponry. Like the Vietnamese, they have other factors motivating them to continue their struggle.

Like the Vietnamese, they have other factors motivating them to continue their struggle.

If you think the factors motivating folks in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza don't account for much pick up a copy of Errol Morris' documentary "The Fog of War" and listen to Robert McNamara recounting his exchange over lunch with the Foreign Minister of Vietnam twenty years after the end of the American war there.  

International Law is not positive law. Yes, it is honored mainly in the breach but it provides a basic rule-set that most states find to be to their advantage most of the time - particularly when there is no independent and impartial power to enforce IL. Some violations are seen as more generally threatening or disturbing than others - killing diplomats, invading and annexing neighbors for one. When both sides are in multiple violations of a long string of UNSC resolutions as is the case with the Mideast, then no one cares, other than the participants & their supporters. No one cared about Saddam's violations either except the U.S. and Britain (somewhat).

And in fairness to many administrations of both parties, they sanctioned Pakistan for its nuclear activities ( obviously not harshly enough). It is important to note that countries who did NOT sign the NPT like Israel, India and ( I believe) Pakistan retained their sovereign right to build nukes. Those that did like Iraq, Iran and North Korea waived that right in return for access to nuclear technology.

Re; Jacobo Arbenz

At one time the United Fruit Company funded the overthrows of governments in Central America -at one point comically paying a small army to fight a small army funded by the State Department but they had passed the zenith of their influence (circa 1920's). Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers needed no urging from United Fruit to remove Arbenz from power as he had already run afoul of a number of U.S. officials who were suspicious of Arbenz for ideological reasons. To cite another example, the Brits cared about oil in Iran, Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles cared about the Communists who might overthrow Mossedegh, so, we overthrew Mossedegh first.

Corporations do not yet have independent military powers, not even PMCs that have formidibly trained paramilitary forces for hire, they act on behalf of state interests and with their permission. Note the one PMC that did try to function as a " Free Company", the South African Executive Outcomes, was swiftly shut down after it demonstrated that capacity all too well. Blackwater, Dyncorp etc. will not take missions that will result in clashes with great power militaries. Could they slip the chain ? Possibly - but for that to happen the world must become considerably more disorderly first.

Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers needed no urging from United Fruit to remove Arbenz from power as he had already run afoul of a number of U.S. officials who were suspicious of Arbenz for ideological reasons.

Whether Eisenhower and Allen and John Foster Dulles needed urging or not is beside the point. The United Fruit Company and its agents and Congressional supporters did encourage the U.S. government to engineer the overthrow of a democratically elected government. Let's be frank here: Jacobo Arbenz ran "afoul" of U.S. officials because he was committed to exercising his duties to the benefit of the Guatemalan people, not for the benefit of the U.S. Any person with darker skin or slanted eyes who refused to accept U.S. hegemony was bound to "run afoul" of American officials for "ideological reasons."

To cite another example, the Brits cared about oil in Iran, Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles cared about the Communists who might overthrow Mossedegh, so, we overthrew Mossedegh first.

There was no credible threat that Dr. Mohammad Mossedegh would be overthrown by Communists. Again, this is simply disinformation provided to justify our meddling in the internal affairs of another nation. Replacing Mossedegh, who was elected through a democratic process by the Iranian parliament, with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran) has certainly played well to our benefit as reflected today in our strong and cooperative relationship with Iran.

Blackwater, Dyncorp etc. will not take missions that will result in clashes with great power militaries. Could they slip the chain ? Possibly - but for that to happen the world must become considerably more disorderly first.

There is credible evidence provided by Iraqi citizens and members of the U.S. military that organizations like Blackwater and Dynacorp have, in fact, slipped their chains.

Since my family was out of town this weekend I finally had an opportunity to watch, without interruption, Eugene Jarecki's documentary film Why We Fight. It is a non-partisan, unflinching look from the vantage point of 9/11 of how militarized our society has become and what drives us to fight. One of the points made by the film is how often the U.S. has defied and ignored international law in pursuit of its objectives.

In this context it is easy to see that international law is something that strong nations use to try to keep weaker nations in check because they certainly pay little, if any, attention to it themselves. Look, for example, at the U.S. record. Guatemala (1954), Lebanon (1958), Vietnam (3 million Vietnamese dead), Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983) and this is a short list. Given our record, the leaders of states like Iran and North Korea and of para-states like Hamas and Hezbollah have no patience for hearing lectures from U.S. representatives about the sanctity of international law.

"At one time the United Fruit Company funded the overthrows of governments in Central America -at one point comically paying a small army to fight a small army funded by the State Department but they had passed the zenith of their influence (circa 1920's)."

I'm glad you are willing to acknowledge the bloody role corporations have played in global politics. But as for your claim that United Fruit Co's influence waned in the 1920's, I would argue the US continued its policies of destabilization in the region to support the business interests of the UF Co., its successors, and other US corporations.

This pattern of corporate aggression and violence in cooperation with governments has been repeated in many parts of the globe. Nor is it new. It can be traced back to the emergence of the Dutch and English East India Companies (and others) in the 17th Century. These companies were not only licensed to conduct trade, they also were authorized to make war, seize territories, built and man forts, etc.

"Blackwater, Dyncorp etc. will not take missions that will result in clashes with great power militaries. Could they slip the chain ? Possibly - but for that to happen the world must become considerably more disorderly first."

Such "firms" do not have to slip the chain. They are run by former government officials and intelligence spooks who are well connected. They thus operate with impunity unless or until they screw up and draw the public's attention. A similar entity ran a successful cocaine smuggling and arms dealing operation back in the eighties under the auspices of Oliver North. The lid came off only after Eugene Hasenfus, a low-level operative, was captured by the Nicaraguans when his plane was shot down.

Are Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua, the Congo, Angola, Honduras, Somalia and the Sudan on this list as well?

Yes, and while we are at it let's add Cuba and the Phillipines to the list too. Does anybody not afflicted with either terminal stupidity or ideological blindness have to wonder why folks in the Middle East and elsewhere don't want to listen to us?

Multiple causation rules history, not simple explanations about white capitalists not liking "slanty eyed or brown peoples". Racism or the desire to make a buck were often beside the point. Or just one factor in a large mix.

Yes, corporations have attempted to use their influence to get states to adopt foreign policy positions but the idea that corporations dominated states - a classic paleo-Marxist position from the early 20th century - is not borne out by the historical record of how and why statesmen made decisions. States set the markers for their corporations, not the other way around. Nor are corporate interests the only ones in play lobbying governments

National interest encompasses economic interests but it is not limited solely to pursuing rational economic interests ( if it was, I'd argue history would be more peaceful than it turned out to be. Most colonial enterprises, for example, were money-losing ventures but made eminent strategic sense in terms of sea lanes and denying rivals strategic resources)

The most successful corporate lobbying derives from situations, usually created by past statesmen for national advantage, where the interest of the corporation align with a larger set of national goals. Did ITT lobby Nixon about Chile ? Yes. Were Kissinger and Nixon concerned about Allende's ideological affinity for the Soviets and Castro ?( these were real by the way, regardless of what Z magazine and The Nation like to scribble, the Soviet archives have demonstrated otherwise. Brezhnev lamented the impossibility of extending Allende more direct support). Absolutely. Which was primary in Nixon's mind ? There's an extensive record here.

Mossadegh is another amusing example of popular oversimplification. As a historical character, he has been adopted as something of a democratic icon by critics of U.S. " imperialism". Well, Mossadegh was certainly a nationalist and anti-Western but he was no democrat (nor was he a Communist either). Or even a liberal. Mossadegh was a far-right reactionary, a descendant of the ousted Qajar dynasty, a partisan of Iran's very conservative large landowner class and somebody not afraid to have heads broken in the streets. Mossadegh's popularity derived from his strong anti-British stance and his skill as an orator in manipulating symbols of traditional Shiite imagery and Persian nationalism.

He also had a tactical alliance with the Tudeh Party because it helped him against the Shah's supporters and made Moscow more friendly. Mossadegh was also old, in ill-health and not in control of his Communist allies which made Eisenhower very, very, nervous ( the Soviets had been forced out of northern Iran only in 1946 and tried to forment Azeri unrest ever since). Had Mossadegh seemed strong, like Nasser, U.S. policy might have tilted against intervention like it did with the Suez Crisis, despite an enormous loathing for Nasser as Egypt's leader by Dulles and Eisenhower.

In reality nothing actually rules history because ultimately history is a series of contingent, not random, events. I did not argue that racial and cultural antipathy in the State Department and intelligence services of the U.S. were the substantive causes of the decision to overthrow Arbenz but it seems foolish to deny a persistent pattern of negative stereotyping regarding the political judgment of national leaders in countries that are not run by people who easily fit into a European typography.

Your references to Mossedegh and others reminds me of a comment made by Max Reddick, the fictional protagonist of the late John Williams' novel The Man Who Cried I Am. Reddick, who is a journalist, has gone to work for the President and, of course, is given the Negro portfolio to handle. One of the tasks he is assigned is to oversee the admission of a young black man, who is loosely modeled on James Meredith, into a southern state university.

The prospective student, whose name is MacKendrick, suddenly and without explanation withdraws his application to the university. Reddick is puzzled and tracks MacKendrick down to get an explantion from him. MacKendrick tells him that he withdrew his application because five of the six alumni sponsors who had previously agreed to allow him to use their names as references as required by the university withdrew their support.

Reddick does a little more digging into MacKendrick's story and uncovers the fact that the Administration he worked for and that publicly, at least, supported MacKendrick had gone behind Reddick's and MacKendrick's backs and persuaded MacKendrick's sponsors to withdraw their names. Reddick is incensed and confronts the two white presidential advisors who are suppose to be working with him on this issue.

One of the white aides named Carrigan offers this explanation, "'Max, he said, with a sigh, '"it's true that we did learn about MacKendrick. His grades, for Mississippi, were all right, but we didn't want to run the risk of a confrontation with the governor and then have the kid flunk out of school - "

Reddick responds as follows: "'Why is it that no one seems to mind that millions of Negroes are failures because of the way they have to live in our society, and everyone minds that, once a Negro decides to buck the society, he forfeits the right to fail.'" (emphasis added)

My point is that whenever someone like myself begins to point out how the U.S. undermined, subverted and worked to overthrow and supplant democraticaly elected leaders of other countries such as Iran, folks like you want to point out that leaders like Mossedegh et al. had personal and political failings and did not walk on water. Whatever Mossedegh shortcomings may have been the U.S. had no right to foment an overthrow of the Iranian government.

There is no popular oversimplification going on at this end. What is going on is your refusal to accept the fact that you and people like you do not have the right to select the leaders of other nations. You are perfectly within your rights to judge them but you have no right to decide who should speak for the Iranian people. The people of Iran, Guatemala, Chile etc. and their leaders have a right to fail if that is their fate. They also have right to succeed on their own terms too.

"I did not argue that racial and cultural antipathy in the State Department and intelligence services of the U.S. were the substantive causes of the decision to overthrow Arbenz but it seems foolish to deny a persistent pattern of negative stereotyping regarding the political judgment of national leaders in countries that are not run by people who easily fit into a European typography."

As best as I can recall, you're the first one to bring "race" into this discussion. PT and T3 both pointed this out; as another card-carrying member of P6's cadre, I just thought I'd cosign this point.

Yes, corporations have attempted to use their influence to get states to adopt foreign policy positions but the idea that corporations dominated states - a classic paleo-Marxist position from the early 20th century - is not borne out by the historical record of how and why statesmen made decisions.

So, let's see, G.W. Bush has filled his cabinet and the top government jobs with corporate types, the Executive & Legislative branches both allow corporate lobbyists to write corporate-friendly legislation often at the direct expense and disadvantage of the public, the military-industrial complex consumes the lion's share of public dollars to the detriment of public services, corporations and their pacs buy politicians and elections, workers have few or no rights corporations are legally bound to recognize, yet the US is not dominated by big business?

I think the introduction of capitalism was legit. I think the refuting of racism as the primary driver of white capitalists is understandable given the environment.

Race is implicit in discussions of colonial and post-colonial politics, economics and such because race was the organizing principle for social control in the colonies and the basis for the puposely disfunctional borders the imperials left behind. Whether racism was the intent or not, every time you tell of someone getting screwed by colonialism, that person is black or brown or red or yellow.

"Race is implicit in discussions of colonial and post-colonial politics ..."

I agree. We were simply pointing out how it became explicit in this ongoing conversation.

"I did not argue that racial and cultural antipathy in the State Department and intelligence services of the U.S. were the substantive causes of the decision to overthrow Arbenz but it seems foolish to deny a persistent pattern of negative stereotyping regarding the political judgment of national leaders in countries that are not run by people who easily fit into a European typography."

O - I wrote the above not "Anonymous." 

"The most successful corporate lobbying derives from situations, usually created by past statesmen for national advantage, where the interest of the corporation align with a larger set of national goals."

BTW, the word "statesmen" may denote "a respected leader in foreign affairs," but that definition by no means excludes such individuals from being agents of corporate interests. I would think you could agree that George P. Shultz, as Secretary of State under the Reagan Administration, could be considered as a classic example of a "statesman." He also happened to be the president and director of Bechtel Group before he was appointed to the cabinet. Also, take a look at who's who among recent U.S. Ambassadorial appointments and you will discover a roster replete with corporate fatcats and flacks who, thanks to their political connections and donations, have added diplomatic portfolios to their "acquisitions."

So, given the above scenario, it seems highly likely that national interests and corporate interests align more by design than by circumstance. For example, Halliburton was in an economic nose dive before Cheney nominated himself to the vice presidential slot on the Bush ticket in the 2000 election. Since the Cheney-driven invasion of Iraq, Halliburton's profits have skyrocketed. 

"O - I wrote the above not "Anonymous." 

Sorry, PT, I got distracted. I meant to quote the following from Anonymous:

"Multiple causation rules history, not simple explanations about white capitalists not liking "slanty eyed or brown peoples". Racism or the desire to make a buck were often beside the point. Or just one factor in a large mix. "

Thanks for pointing out my error. My comments that followed the mis-quote still apply.

At the risk of bogging down into a debate over semantics, I actually did not introduce race, I just refuted a somewhat ambiguous suggestion that racism was a primary historical driver.

ptcruiser wrote:

"Any person with darker skin or slanted eyes who refused to accept U.S. hegemony was bound to "run afoul" of American officials for "ideological reasons."

So I rejected that suggestion in my next comment. That many or most European and American leaders harbored racist sentiments is true. That other motives counted far higher in making geopolitical decisions ( such as strategic considerations) is, in my view, also true and readily provable as Temple3 quickly demonstrated.

I will say that for the time period in question -the era of de-colonization - most American opponents in the Third world were nonwhite. They were also on the Left which I consider to be the more important variable of the two.

As for the other point by ptcruiser:

"What is going on is your refusal to accept the fact that you and people like you do not have the right to select the leaders of other nations. You are perfectly within your rights to judge them but you have no right to decide who should speak for the Iranian people. The people of Iran, Guatemala, Chile etc. and their leaders have a right to fail if that is their fate. They also have right to succeed on their own terms too."

I say in a vacumn, a fair point. Guatemala too was more a case of overwrought paranoia on the part of the Eisenhower administration. When the spillover costs of failure are catastrophic - Iran becoming a satellite of the USSR and Soviet armies overlooking the strait of Hormuz - I say, no, they don't have that right when we would have had to bear the costs of their failure.

I would not have bet Western Europe and Japan's economies ( we were not major oil importers then) on Mossadegh's waning ability to ride out Iran's semi-revolutionary situation given Soviet interest in Iran and the organizational ability of the Tudeh.

Khomeini, incidentally agreed and made killing off the Tudeh a high priority for his Islamist regime once the Shah's followers had been dealt with.

We are still going through the same period of decolonization that began at the close of World War II. The creation of the state of Israel was the last major act of western colonial powers (and the Soviet Union) to draw national boundaries in lands occupied by people with darker skins and different religious and cultural practices. You may consider their placement on the left of the political spectrum as being of greater importance but I am willing to argue that it was their alleged leftist tendencies (Colonialists and their apologists have an extremely hard time distinguishing between what constitutues the nationalist tendencies and what makes up the leftist tendencies of these leaders. Dick Cheney, for example, still considers the African National Congress to be a terrorist organization controlled by Communists.) and the color of their skin that caused heart tremors for western governments and their intelligence agencies.

As for the right of leaders and peoples in other nations to make their own decisions, when have we, i.e., the U.S. ever had to bear the cost of their so-called failures? The natural resources of these countries do not belong to the U.S. and its allies. If you don't believe that folks in other countries have the right to self-determination then you should step up and forthrightly say so. Let's not play around with this issue. State what you believe.

"At the risk of bogging down into a debate over semantics, I actually did not introduce race..."

If that is the case then I also owe you an apology. 

"... I just refuted a somewhat ambiguous suggestion that racism was a primary historical driver."

An assertion is not equivalent to a refutation. 

"... I just refuted a somewhat ambiguous suggestion that racism was a primary historical driver."

 The post-colonial history of the United States would strongly indicate that racism the primary driver in terms of how black Americans and Indians were treated. 

"An assertion is not equivalent to a refutation"

Touche'. Well put and true. Clarification: I asserted otherwise.

Internally, I would agree that racism was again a major driver in the political system of the United States when the Compromise of 1877 readmitted the ex-Confederate leadership as junior partners in the national ruling elite, abandoned the commitment to radical reconstruction and let Redeemer governments establish de jure segregation and one party rule.

Externally, racial considerations were thrown to the wind when it suited national interests, as with covertly supporting Japan over Russia  in 1905 ( T.R. set out to screw the Russians during the Treaty of Portsmouth negotiations and he did it so well they were grateful for it). We cared about Japan's ability to balance Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany to keep the "Open Door" in China for us on the cheap ( ended up costing us in 1941 though).

This is, by the way, one of the better discussions I've been in lately.

" I should note I was just kidding about the tactics of the US in dealing with Europe. They've done nothing of the sort. I made it all up...I hope no one else falls into that 'trap"

Actually, Temp, there are ppl in academia who do make those arguments regarding Europe and CIA and pre-CIA operations in Italy and provisions for " stay behind" operations. I've had a respected editor of a journal send me a paper to preview along those very lines so I assumed that was the genre you were referencing.

Here's one example ( provision of citation does not imply my agreement with everything in it, just that these are arguments that are being made)

http://larc.sdsu.edu/humanrights/rr/PLAarticles/mcsherry.html

" The earliest uses of targeted U.S. covert operations were in the Greek civil
war and in the Italian elections of 1948, in which the Communist Party (PCI)
stood poised to gala power. Respected domestically for its central role in the
Italian antifascist resistance, the PCI was subject to a covert U.S. campaign
of political manipulation, paramilitary action, and propaganda to undermine
its popularity. The Italian operation, which was considered successful, set a
precedent for CIA covert operations and dirty methods that became standard
practice. [34]

Throughout Europe, U.S. and British officials, operating within NATO, set up
secret stay-behind armies to prepare for a Communist invasion -- and prevent
Communist electoral victories. These paramilitary forces incorporated fascists
and former Nazis (Searchlight, 1991). One NATO source told Searchlight (a
British nongovernmental organization) that the two-pronged strategy of
Britain's Stay Behind was "to destabilize any left-leaning government, even a
Social Democratic one, and in the event of a Warsaw Pact attack to function as
a guerrilla army using classical guerrilla tactics" (Ibid.). [35] The U.S.
pushed for a secret clause in the North Atlantic Treaty requiring the secret
services of all joining nations to establish their own branches of the secret
army -- and to oppose Communist influence, even if the population voted for
Communist candidates in free elections (Simpson, 1988: 100-102; Willan, 1991:
27; Rowse, 1994). The covert project (known as Gladio in Italy, Operation Stay
Behind in the U.K., and S heepskin in Greece, among other names) encompassed
all of Europe and Scandinavia, including neutral countries. Agents set up
hundreds of arms caches all across Europe; one was at the U.S. Army's Camp
Derby (Lauria, 1991: 15; Willan, 1991: 170).

Charles deGaulle pulled France out of NATO partially due to the secret
protocol, which he considered a violation of sovereignty, and he regarded the
secret network to be a danger to his government (Willan, 1991: 27; Kwitney,
1992). Discovery of the covert project in 1990 caused a political firestorm in
Europe. In that year, the European Parliament passed a strongly worded
denunciation of the clandestine organization, its antidemocratic implications,
and the terrorist acts associated with it. [36] "

Here is another:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/collection_gladio
/Terrorism_Western_Europe.pdf

Most of the rest in this genre are in Italian, Greek, French etc. I can probably find translated copies somewhere but that would take time. The point is, while you might have made something up in an effort to deceive, you did a good job of echoing a position that has been put forward from time to time.

Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change
From Hawaii to Iraq

By Stephen Kinzer

Times Books: Henry Holt and Company

384 pages, $27.50

In 1953 the brutal, venal shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pushed into exile by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister.

“Modern Iran has produced few figures of Mossadegh’s stature,” Kinzer says.

Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and to strengthen nationalism—by which he meant get rid of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which had been robbing Iran for half a century. Indeed, the British company had been earning each year as much as all the royalties it paid Iran over 50 years. Mossadegh intended to recapture those riches to rebuild Iran.

In a scheme to get rid of Mossadegh, the British enlisted Secretary of State Dulles; he in turn enlisted his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and what ensued was a truly masterful piece of skullduggery. First came a propaganda campaign to convince the West that Mossadegh was a communist, which in the U.S. of the 1950s put him on the level of a child molester. Actually, Mossadegh hated communists, but most of our press swallowed the lie. Time Magazine had previously called Mossadegh “the Iranian George Washington” and “the most world-renowned man his ancient race had produced for centuries.” Now it called him “one of the worst calamities to the anti-communist world since the Red conquest of China.”

The propaganda program on the outside was followed by a bogus “revolution” inside Iran, with a CIA agent-provocateur hiring such a huge army of thugs and terrorists to roam the streets of Tehran that the town fell into violent anarchy. The CIA plotters ousted Mossadegh and restored the shah to his Peacock Throne.

For Secretary of State Dulles and his old law clients—including Gulf Oil Corp., Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, Texaco Inc., and Mobil Corp., who were subsequently allowed to take 40 percent of Iran’s oil supply—the shah’s return was a happy and very lucrative event. But, Kinzer reminds us, “The shah did not tolerate dissent [to silence some, he simply killed them] and repressed opposition newspapers, political parties, trade unions, and civic groups. As a result, the only place Iranian dissidents could find a home was in mosques and religious schools, many of which were controlled by” radical fundamentalists. So when the revolution against the shah finally broke out in 1979, it was inevitable that these clerics led it.

They then went on to sponsor acts of terror from Saudi Arabia to Argentina, mostly to humiliate the United States, and “their example inspired Muslim fanatics around the world, including those who carried out the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. None of this ... might have happened if Mossadegh had not been overthrown.”

At roughly the same time Secretary of State Dulles was destroying democracy in Iran, he was also busy destroying democracy in Central America, and once again it was on behalf of a renegade industry: United Fruit Co. If any bureaucrat deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison for conflict of interest, it was Dulles. And several of his bureaucratic buddies would have been right there beside him breaking rocks.

“Few private companies have ever been as closely interwoven with the United States government as United Fruit was during the mid-1950s,” writes Kinzer. For decades, Dulles had been one of its principal legal counselors. (At one time Dulles negotiated an agreement with Guatemala that gave United Fruit a 99-year lease on a vast tract of land, tax free.) Dulles’ brother—Allen, the CIA Director—had also done legal work for the company and owned a big block of its stock. So did other top officials at State; one had previously been president of United Fruit. The head of our National Security Council was United Fruit’s former chairman of the board, and the president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development was a former board member.

These fine chaps and their numerous colleagues in our government were, not surprisingly, very upset when between 1944 and 1954, Guatemala entered what would be known as its “democratic spring,” denoting the presidencies of Juan José Arevalo and—after the first peaceful transfer of power in Guatemalan history—Jacobo Arbenz.

What those two did was nothing less than breathtaking. Under Arevalo, the National Assembly was persuaded to establish the first social security system, guarantee the rights of trade unions, fix a 48-hour workweek, and even slap a modest tax on the big landholders—meaning three American companies: a huge electric monopoly, a rail monopoly, and, of course, United Fruit, which controlled the other two.

Arbenz was even bolder. He persuaded the National Assembly to pass the Agrarian Reform Law, which gave the government the power to seize and redistribute uncultivated land on estates larger than 672 acres. United Fruit owned more than 550,000 acres, about one-fifth of the country’s arable land, but cultivated less than 15 percent—while many thousands of Guatemalans were starving for land. So in 1953, Arbenz’s government seized 234,000 uncultivated acres of United Fruit’s land, for which the government offered in compensation (one can imagine the vengeful hilarity this must have stirred in Arbenz’s circle) a paltry $1.185 million—the value United Fruit had declared each year for tax purposes.

That did it. The Dulles gang back in Washington, all “products of the international business world and utterly ignorant of the realities of Guatemalan life, considered the idea of land redistribution to be inherently Marxist,” writes Kinzer. So they began using the same techniques as in Iran, although much more elaborately played out—first portraying Guatemala as having fallen into the hands of Communists, a falsehood that was supported by the U.S. press, including a series in The New York Times. Dulles even got Francis Cardinal Spellman, the most powerful and most hysterically anti-communist priest in America, to recruit Guatemala’s Catholic clergy to “rise as a single man against this enemy of God and country.” Then the CIA launched a bogus “invasion” by an “anti-Communist” force, followed by a bogus “revolt.”

Arbenz was forced into exile and replaced by Col. Carlos Armas, who promptly canceled reforms and established a police state. He was soon assassinated, but bedlam continued. By overthrowing Arbenz, writes Kinzer, “the United States crushed a democratic experiment that held great promise for Latin America. As in Iran a year earlier, it deposed a regime that embraced fundamental American ideals but that had committed the sin of seeking to retake control of its own natural resources.”

The dismantling of Arbenz’s administration was named, with the usual buffoonery of our undercover government, “Operation Success.”

When Guatemalans saw that democracy was dead, thousands revolted, took to the hills, and, inspired by Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba, formed guerrilla bands. “To combat this threat,” writes Kinzer, “the Guatemalan army used such brutal tactics that all normal political life in the country ceased. Death squads roamed with impunity, chasing down and murdering politicians, union organizers, student activists, and peasant leaders. Thousands of people were kidnapped... and never seen again. Many were tortured to death on military bases ... This repression raged for three decades, and during this period soldiers killed more civilians in Guatemala than in the rest of the hemisphere combined.” A United Nations commission put the toll at 200,000.

Hi again,

I previewed a manuscript version of article #2 for an editor, who while an excellent historian himself, is far removed from military or intel topics. The original version was pretty wild ( i.e. highly speculative, polisci style) this version was more restrained and sourced. I greatly disagree with the author's interpretations of some aspects and omission of some contexts but that's what historians like to argue about.

Re: Compromise of 1877

"you left out the biggest issue of all - the removal of troops from the south - which led in large part to the rise of American proto-terror groups aimed at eliminating the considerable economic and political progress made by black folk in just 12 years after the formal abolition of involuntary servitude"

I didn't leave out the point, troop removal is subsumed in the Compromise itself as the quid pro quo for the presidency staying in Republican hands.

I would say that the protection of the troops afforded to African-American voters and office-holders waned long before the compromise but their removal was, I would agree, more than simple pro-forma.

The occupational U.S. Army did wage a vigorous counterterrorism style campaign against the KKK and related groups but they were always spread too thin. Even where Army protection was strong and the state government was solidly in the hands of Freedmen and White Radical Republicans, like Louisiana, election years saw enormous waves of assassinations and other forms of political violence (800 assassinations or politically-related murders in La. alone in 1868 or 1872 - can't recall which election. Imagine the outcry if that happened in 2004 across the entire country of 300 million. The level of ex-Confederate resistance to Reconstruction really approached that of Iraq's insurgency. A point much underplayed in most American histories)

Hope you don't mind the edit. I want it clear where your intro ended and the quote from your associate's email started.

And thank you for restraining him.

My immediate reaction was, if the Union army was spread too thin, how vigorous could the anti-terrorism effort be? But then, those terrorists managed to assasinate a US President. 

"Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and to strengthen nationalism—by which he meant get rid of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which had been robbing Iran for half a century. Indeed, the British company had been earning each year as much as all the royalties it paid Iran over 50 years. Mossadegh intended to recapture those riches to rebuild Iran."

Iranians did love Mossadegh -though he was in a very significant political decline in terms of popularity prior to his overthrow . I would argue that without that decline, Operation Ajax, the details of which border on the comic-opera, could not possibly have succeeded.

The author is correct about Anglo-Persian Oil co. and Mossadegh's intentions for nationalization. The Shah's father tried that too and was toppled by the Brits and Russians.

Democracy ? Where is the evidence ? Mossadegh was building a secular, nationalist-authoritarian system with a populist bent, like Nasser or Sukarno, rejecting both religion and monarchy. Typical of the region for the time which was inspired most by nationalization and modernization programs. He just wasn't doing it very well compared to his peers.

 The Mossadegh myth derives from the Shiite cultural centrality of martyrdom. The most powerful symbol in Shiite culture is meshed with and distorts the historical memory of Mossadegh's actual policies and actions. Khomeini's revolutionaries used Mossadegh as a banner in 1979, with some irony, as Mossadegh would have clapped all of the Islamists in jail if his regime had solidified ( something Khomeini himself knew very well from watching Mossadegh's police deal roughly with rabble-rousing clergy).

No, the edit was helpful - much easier to read !

Well I just think of it in terms of it being the deal itself but if making it explicit helps, fine.

Anonymous, thanks for the article links. I skimmed through them, and plan to read them later when I have the time.

I also have a request. Could you give yourself a screen name? You have made thoughtful and provocative contributions to these discussions, but using Anonymous for a handle is liable to cause confusion should others do likewise.

See, here's the thing. I know who he is. And I know he's a lazy bastard, just because we don't save your name in a cookie if you're not logged in.

He's an historian like James Maclean is an economist (plus a few years experience). We share an appreciation of the Zen approach (really Tao for me) and a despite for Capitalized Platonic Essences.

Mind you, unlike James, most regulars here would probably have issues with his politics. I doubt he and I, in the same office, would come up with the same policies. But we share a few interests, and he's got data...both historical references and clear explanations of, frankly, a VERY mainstream view of how that all hangs together. And I got data too (though apocryphal...). There's a level on which I consider it all HumInt.

There was a time I called his name every time he commented. He ran a bit afoul of the conversational flow and got his butt bit a bit. But he came back. And since we already have our understanding I thought it would be interestinig to see what we all made of a fresh start.

He should register, though. 

Ok, ok -I'll take the time to register. I am a lazy bastard :o)

I blog at Zenpundit -and Earl is correct, while our politics differ I think the epistemology is the same and I enjoy how Earl delves into the different layers of reality in given scenarios. You don't see that kind cognitive multidimensionality very often in the blogosphere.

Democracy ? Where is the evidence ? Mossadegh was building a secular, nationalist-authoritarian system with a populist bent, like Nasser or Sukarno, rejecting both religion and monarchy. Typical of the region for the time which was inspired most by nationalization and modernization programs. He just wasn't doing it very well compared to his peers.

The Central Question

If we look at the development of warfare in the modern era, we see three distinct generations. In the United States, the Army and the Marine Corps are now coming to grips with the change to the third generation. This transition is entirely for the good. However, third generation warfare was conceptually developed by the German offensive in the spring of 1918. It is now more than 70 years old. This suggests some interesting questions: Is it not about time for a fourth generation to appear? If so, what might it look like? These questions are of central importance. Whoever is first to recognize, understand, and implement a generational change can gain a decisive advantage. Conversely, a nation that is slow to adapt to generational change opens itself to catastrophic defeat.

Our purpose here is less to answer these questions than to pose them. Nonetheless, we will offer some tentative answers. To begin to see what these might be, we need to put the questions into historical context.

Three Generations of Warfare

Ok, just FYI -I registered with a secondary account but the following instructions have yet to arrive.

Funny, that you quoted that from DNI - I've been fiddling with writing a journal article on the limits and strengths of 4GW theory for -oh- about half a year. Just finished reading the last of the sources, Van Creveld's _ Rise and Decline of the State_.

Winning an election alone does not make one a democrat. Still less so in the parliamentary context mentioned.

Winning an election alone does not make one a democrat. Still less so in the parliamentary context mentioned.

And being bum rushed from office as a result of a conspiracy between foreign agents (the CIA) and one's internal enemies does not make one a tyrant either. The degree of democratic impulses that beat within Mossadegh's heart is hardly the issue here. Iran was, for better or worse, embarking on the road to democracy (Given the fact, for example, that they had not incorporated the institution of slavery into their national constitution their chances of success were better than the United States at its inception. The American experiment had not even reached the age of adolescence before John Adams and his supporters passed a law making it a criminal offense to criticize the president.) and we can hope that their efforts would have evolved over the years.

Returning Mohammad Reza (the Shah of Iran) to the throne could hardly be described as an improvement over Mossadegh. The Shah was not only a murderer but his police agents so brutally squelched dissent within Iran that the only place where people were safe was inside the mosques. Is it any wonder that so many of them became "captives" of radical, fundamentalist, anti-democratic immans like the Ayatollah Khomeini?

I copied the following from a story that appeared in this morning's online edition of the Los Angeles Times. I read a similar report in a brief Associated Press story yesterday. I was not able to find any mention of this story in the New York Times or Washington Post, which does not surprise me.

Excerpt from the L.A. Times:

"Hezbollah commander Sheik Hassan Nasrallah expressed new defiance late Tuesday. In a televised address, he said his organization would not submit to 'humiliating' conditions imposed by the international community for a cease-fire, and threatened attacks even deeper into Israel.

"Referring to a 'new period' in the 2-week-old conflict, he said Hezbollah would strike beyond the port of Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, where scores of rockets have been falling by the dozens.

'"We will choose the time when we will move beyond — beyond Haifa," Nasrallah said."

Reading this story reminded me of something I had read last week at the blogsite known as Global Guerillas. Here it is:

One major Hezbollah blunder , was its failure to use its extensive inventory of rockets to attack Israeli systems (like power stations and fuel depots), in a crude rendition of an effects based air operation. This would have been a clean extension of the earlier attacks on conventional targets (including the attack on the Israeli ship and the initial special operations attack that took two Israeli soldiers prisoner), and any casualties associated with an attack on a systems target would more likely to have been seen as collateral damage (as part of a war between two equivalent organizations). Further, it could have caused extensive economic damage. On the moral front, this approach would have placed Israel at a significant disadvantage when it opted to bomb Lebanese systems due to paucity of Hezbollah targets. Instead, Hezbollah opted for a useless, low yield civilian terror campaign on Haifa.

This is slightly tongue-in-cheek but do you think it's possible that Hezbollah commanders are reading blogsites for tactical and strategic military tips?

No Temple, the premises about Mossadegh being articulated by ptcruiser are simply wrong, factually speaking.

Whether Mossadegh was morally " better" or " worse" than the Shah is a value judgment, Mossadegh's use of force against political opponents, including those in mosques, is a fact. And pretty much in line with the Shah's regime because Mossadegh was the Prime Minister, technically speaking, of that regime until Mohammed  Reza Pahlavi went into exile. Whether Mossadegh was constructing a democracy in Iran, as opposed to a secular nationalist state is speculation - for which any evidence has yet to be presented.

No slavery in Persian  history ? Ahem. No. Again you need to check your premises before hurling accusations of bullshit.

The ancient Persians abolished slavery (several times actually) but it was reintroduced under Islam and Black Africans were exported as slaves from Zanzibar by Arab traders to Southern Persia and India ( among other places) up until the late 19th century.

No slavery in Persian  history ? Ahem. No. Again you need to check your premises before hurling accusations of bullshit.

The ancient Persians abolished slavery (several times actually) but it was reintroduced under Islam and Black Africans were exported as slaves from Zanzibar by Arab traders to Southern Persia and India ( among other places) up until the late 19th century.

I think you are getting a bit touchy here, Anon. I never wrote that the Persians never practiced slavery. I wrote that it was not incorporated into the constitution under which Mossadegh became prime minister. You need to relax. We understand the difficulty of defending America against all critics foreign and domestic but you don't need to carry all that weight by yourself. 

No Temple, the premises about Mossadegh being articulated by ptcruiser are simply wrong, factually speaking.

The fact is, Br. Anon, that Mossadegh's alleged anti-democratic tendencies and impulses only became problematic to the U.S. and historians like you when he began making noises about nationalizing British and American oil interests. Apparently he was crazy to think that there was something terribly amiss about an agreement that over 50 years had paid Iran less in royalties than the British and American companies had made in profits in any given year of the agreement. 

Whether Mossadegh was morally " better" or " worse" than the Shah is a value judgment,

It's a value judgement that must be made, though. Not making such judgements is how the USofA wound up supporting so many "anti-Communist" dictators. Not making such judgements is a key reason we're in our current straits worldwide. 

Finally registered ;O) 

"We understand the difficulty of defending America against all critics foreign and domestic but you don't need to carry all that weight by yourself"

I don't feel any kind of weight - now I if I had to defend every opponent of the U.S., as habitual critics of American foreign policy  are wont to do, now that would be quite a burden. No,  I was simply annoyed on a personal level at the " bullshit" accusation as I don't think the course of this discussion merits such a charge.

I really see very little moral difference between the Shah and Mossadegh and either was far less bloody than Khomeini. Despite their personal emnity over a dynastic feud, they followed relatively similar internal policies in regard to Iran.

One last comment regarding Mossadegh, if he had an American equivalent today - say an ultraconservative, extreme nationalist politician from an "Old Money" family, known for using religious imagery in his speeches who was somewhat reckless in his foreign policy and who centralized power in his own hands by ignoring traditional constitutional procedures - would you be as admiring ?

One last comment regarding Mossadegh, if he had an American equivalent today - say an ultraconservative, extreme nationalist politician from an "Old Money" family, known for using religious imagery in his speeches who was somewhat reckless in his foreign policy and who centralized power in his own hands by ignoring traditional constitutional procedures - would you be as admiring ?

I don't recall anyone declaring himself to be a fan of Mossadegh. When I pointed out that he had been democratically elected as the prime minister of Iran and that he was overthrown as a result of a plot instigated by the CIA and the U.S. government you felt it necessary to show that Mossadegh was not a democrat and that in his veins the milk of human kindness flowed very slowly, if at all.

In my opinion, you still have not joined the issue. Mossadegh was selected by the Iranian parliament to be the Iranian prime minister. Why you refuse to accept this election as being democratic is beyond me. What caused the Dulles Brothers et al. to pull out their long knives against Mossadegh was his nationalistic belief that Iran's natural resources should be sold at a price that benefited Iranians. Would you be less critical of him if he had thought and acted otherwise?

One last comment regarding Mossadegh, if he had an American equivalent today - say an ultraconservative, extreme nationalist politician from an "Old Money" family, known for using religious imagery in his speeches who was somewhat reckless in his foreign policy and who centralized power in his own hands by ignoring traditional constitutional procedures - would you be as admiring ?

honest arguments entail enjoining the conversation on its merits and not grasping at straws or hurling red herrings. pt cruiser demarcated the line zen has yet to cross:

Or the debate can flow from this Wiki pearl:

By 1944 Reza Shah Pahlavi had abdicated, and Mossadegh was once again elected to parliament. This time he ran as a member of the National Front of Iran (Jebhe Melli), a nationalist organization which he had founded that aimed to end the foreign presence that had established itself in Iran following the Second World War, especially regarding the exploitation of Iran's rich oil resources.

After negotiations for higher oil royalties failed, on March 15, 1951 the Iranian parliament (the Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and seize control of the British-owned and operated Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Prime minister General Haj-Ali Razmara, elected in June 1950, had opposed the nationalization bill on technical grounds. He was assassinated on March 7, 1951 by Khalil Tahmasebi, a member of the militant fundamentalist group Fadayan-e Islam.

There are fundamental questions on the table that remain unanswered and the level of obfuscation suggests a less than authentic desire to engage the principle question.  In informal circles (which exist here - and into which you've been accepted by me already) that's known as bullshit.  The intention is not to inflame, but to make it plain.  Straw men and red herrings are easily diagnosed in the sphere.  Since you're in - show and prove or wear the cap - you know, "Who the cap fits, let them wear it." - Robert Nesta Marley