this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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Mildly Interesting
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She's not wrong that most foreign terrorist threats the US faces were radicalized by our own political and military involvement in other regions
A (very simplified) timeline of US intervention in the middle-east.
Iran democratically elected a secular leader, but he wanted to use iranian oil for iran. So the CIA instead helped the Shah into dictatorial power, who would sell the drilling rights to american and british companies. He opressed his populace so bad, that they turned to Ayatollah Khomeni and his religious extremists to get rid of him. The religious zealots have been in power ever since.
To fight against the Ayatollah Regime that drove out western oil companies, the US illegally bypasses a weapons embargo to arm a neighbouring dictator called Saddam Hussein. He wages the first Gulf War on Iran for 8 years, which results in ~750.000 dead. The poison gas attacks happen with the knowledge of the US.
Russia invades Afghanistan, the US arms local resistance fighters, a group called Al Quaeda under one Osama bin Laden. To help the islamists against the godless Russians, thousands of mercenaries and religious extremists from muslim countries are recruited by the CIA and brought to Afghanistan, they become the Taliban. More than a million civillians die.
Saddam Hussein, seeing no win against Iran instead invades the absolutist, slavetrading monarchy of Kuwait. Kuwait had opened it oil-wells to western companies, so with the help of the CIA and an american PR-agency, the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador pretends to be a nurse and lies about Iraqi soldiers ripping babies out of incubators. The world is shocked. What follows is the second Gulf War. More than a million dead civillians again.
Following this second gulf war, american troops are stationed in the gulf region protecting "western values" (the oil wells). The religious extremists in Afghanistan are not amused, the sheer existence of nonbelievers on holy ground is blasphemy to them. Al Quaeda (formerly funded by the US and the House of Saud) begin their campaign against the west.
Following September 11 2001 the US invades first Afghanistan, then Iraq and don't really bother with the long-term stabilizing of a region they so effectively destabilized. From the chaos rises the Islamic State.
Jesus Christ, where have you been for the past half my life where I couldn't find a good explanation of any of this?
To be fair, I grew up with this shit too, and while I refuse to denigrate public education, the degree to which our curriculum is manipulated to tell a particular story from a particular point of view is hard see as anything other than indoctrination in hindsight. It takes a while to mentally pull oneself out of that sort of thing, particularly when it occurs in our formative years.
But also: there have been a number of disclosures and revelations about the history enumerated in the post you replied to in the last decade - for example, the whole saga around the Iran Coup, and how it was largely instigated by BP (of deepwater horizon fame) and essentially occurred because the Tehran CIA station chief basically stopped listening to orders from DC to back down and yolo’d the fucking thing. That’s not to say the government at large is blameless in that particular case, but it was WAY more complicated and fucky than most people realized until very recently.
I'm lucky to have recognized the indoctrination stuff as far back as elementary school. I've essentially always been hyper fixated on manipulation tactics seemingly since birth.
We invaded Iraq (2nd time) after dubious claims from a dissident that they had WMDs. Germany even told us not to listen to this guy.