
Inside the Former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran (2015) - boramalper
http://thecitylane.com/inside-former-us-embassy-tehran-iran/
======
yardie
I don't know why people think the USAs relationship with other countries is
complicated. I guess it's complicated in the fact that we aren't the good guys
as we've been brought up to believe. "We" have overthrown democratically,
elected governments, trained death squads, assassins, and insurgents. Our own
Navy shot down a passenger plane, and we tried to convince the world it was
terrorists,and the best we could do was sorry, not sorry.

It's not complicated, the US does bad shit, too. Sometimes it blows up in our
face.

~~~
marcoperaza
The Cold War was a struggle for the future of mankind. The spread of communism
was a very real threat and would have been catastrophic, much worse than the
fall of Rome; a new Dark Ages with mankind under a boot for a thousand years
was a real prospect.

The Iranian government was cozying up to the Soviets and bringing in communist
forces into their government. There is good reason to believe that the Soviets
were pulling off the kind of suriptitious legitimate-looking takeover that
they had so successfully executed in Eastern Europe before everyone realized
what was happening. Just like our support of Pinochet in Chile, it was a
choice between two evils. We did what we though had to be done. In the years
preceding the installation of the Shah, the iron curtain had fallen around
Eastern Europe, China had fallen to Mao, the Soviets had tested their nukes
and built an arsenal, Korea had been split, etc. This was an all out struggle.

~~~
guard-of-terra
It's now obvious that the spread of communism was a straw man. It didn't turn
out viable after all.

Torturing or killing people in the name of straw man containment doesn't sound
as a valid excuse anymore.

> legitimate-looking takeover that they had so successfully executed in
> Eastern Europe before everyone realized what was happening.

This is plain false. Takeover of Eastern Europe was a result of USSR winning
the war that Germany lost. It was arranged so that USSR gets Eastern Europe
that it has already took. Everybody realized what was happening.

Don't see how it could happen in Iran, much less how post-communist Iran would
be worse these days than jihadist nuclear Iran you now have.

~~~
marcoperaza
You're mistaken about the nature of Stalin's takeover of Eastern Europe. He
maintained plausible deniability until the very last minute. He made it look
like a democratic process while his cronies were throwing opponents out of
windows. Some people did see through it, people like Churchill and Patton. But
Roosevelt and Truman were completely fooled by Stalin, and thought they could
trust him.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc#Concealed_transfo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc#Concealed_transformation_dynamics)

As for communism proving non-viable, how can you possibly judge actions in the
50s by what surprised _everyone_ in the 80s? And we have every reason to
believe that communism would have spread further and lasted longer if not for
the extraordinary Western efforts to prevent and undermine them. They would
certainly have taken all of Asia and South America, for instance.

~~~
guard-of-terra
> how can you possibly judge actions in the 50s by what surprised everyone in
> the 80s

The thing is, _your ends don 't justify your means_. It was Stalin's dogma and
boy was he wrong. You can't justify crimes with "or what would have happened".
The fall of communism just makes that apparent.

~~~
marcoperaza
That's a worthless platitude. Your values mean nothing if you lose. Our ideals
of democracy and human rights wouldn't be worth the paper they're written on
if the Nazis or Communists achieved world domination.

~~~
guard-of-terra
But they didn't and they couldn't.

However, what do your ideals of democracy worth when you overthrew democratic
regimes?

~~~
marcoperaza
> _But they didn 't and they couldn't._

They most certainly could have.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I don't think so. With their half-life they'll never be able to overrun much
of the world. And thing is, we'll never know now. It's your opinion vs my
opinion.

------
hymath
is still Exist

