Wednesday, December 3, 2014

The enemny of my enemy is . . . my friend ? ?

It's said that politics makes strange bedfellows.    That's sort of akin to the saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.   Well, sometimes.

The Sunni extremists who have established the Islamic State -- or ISIS aka ISIL -- in Iraq are being bombed by fighter jets from the U.S., from France, from the U. K., from Canada and . . . and from Iran.

News sources say that the U. S. is aware that Iranian bombers are operating in the same area as the U.S. and its allies are . . . but whether there is any official cooperation is not publically known.

Still, when we are both fighting the same bad guys, doesn't that make us something a little other than enemies?    At the least, it might help in the final negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program.

It will be interesting to watch this latest chapter in U.S.-Iran relations.    Remember, we started the enmity in 1953 when our CIA and the British M16 orchestrated the over-throw of their first democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.   

Western oil interests simply couldn't abide the socialist government that nationalized their oil industry, so we helped get rid of their government and reinstalled the Shah.   We'd be pretty mad too, if the Iranian ayatollahs had their secret service orchestrate a take-over in Washington and put Donald Trump in charge, wouldn't we?

Remember that, when we paint them as the bad guys.   I'm not saying they have not done bad things, and I don't like the repressive theocracy that they have now.   But neither do I like a lot of things that we have been done to other countries.   Iran is only one.

Ralph

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