Smeagol
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2012
- Messages
- 4,147
- Reaction score
- 1,694
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
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Have we (the US) screwed up the Middle East?
I think we have, and for decades to come. For good or for bad, and as imperfect as it was, it was somewhat stable. Now, it's chaos.
Discuss.
They are the type of place that would have been screwed up anyway but we added fuel to the fire.
All by themselves:
Honor killings
Public executions
Women treated like dirt
Assad, Ghadaffi (we were pretty much hands of Syria and Libya)
Female genital mutilations
Christian persecution
Children forced to marry crusty old farts, some dying of blood loss trauma on the wedding nights
Forced arranged marriages sometime with relatives
Dictatorships (the ones we didn't install)
OPEC nations ripping the US off where the privileged live high on the camel while the average person lives in poverty
Xenophobic culture
With our help
Militarization in many regions especially Iraq
Support for countries with obscene human rights records due to oil dependency
Hypocritical foreign policy toward Iran in the 1950s. "Making the world safe for democracy" so we overthrow the democratic government and install a dictatorship leading to the Ayatollahs.
Enrichment of homicidal dictators. Saddam Hussein thought the world of Reagan.
Ineffective in influencing Saudi Arabia to pursue peaceful democratic reform to look more like Turkey while making them a regional economic and military powerhouse.