Trump Tries To Collapse Iran’s Economy And Why This Is Good News For Terrorists
During the 20th century, it became clear times of economic downturn were the most likely to lead to chaos, and chaos is the most likely to lead to extremism.
During the 1930s and the early years of the Great Depression, America was actually very close to having a socialist or fascist revolution. Many felt the capitalist economy that had just given them the roaring twenties was now why they were waiting in lines for soup in buildings created by Al Capone. The socialist party even came in 3rd place during the 1932 presidential election with 2.23% of the votes, with the communist party coming in 4th at 0.26% of the votes. While that may not sound like a lot, this is compared to 0.73% and 0.13% of the votes respectably just four years earlier.
Of course, that’s not what happened. Instead, most Americans settled for the left-wing FDR and his social democrat New Deal programs. This includes socialist labor groups at the time, and the fascists were kept at bay only through social policies. Most famously, the Japanese-American internment camps.
Russia and Germany were not so lucky. Due to both of them living under monarchies during there economic depressions after World War One — the Tsar for Russia and Kaiser for Germany (who was arguably a more brutal leader than Adolf Hitler) — they were unable to settle on a safe social democrat (well, Germany did for a short time, however, they did not start off with that option like the United States did during there time of economic collapse). This led to the two most deadly ideologies of the 20th century — communism in Russia and fascism in Germany. However, it must be noted that even though we knew these ideologies lost, that wasn’t always clear. If you had opened an economics textbook from the 60s until around the early 90s, it would have told you that the USSR’s centrally planned economy would outproduce the free market by around 2000.
I warn of this as it seems the United States is currently trying to create the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that ISIS is defeated, the president is still using the aggressive foreign policy that created it in the first place.
The other thing we learn throughout history is that people don’t like to be occupied. For this, the best source is the 18th century, when the United States was being occupied by the British Empire. After all, what is American history but the fight of men to not be occupied by a foreign government?
The Middle East is radical, no one is denying that. When Christopher Hitchens visited a town on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border about a month after 9/11, he noticed the radical has caused them to lose all sense of reality and consistency:
As elsewhere in Pakistan, there was a miasma of self-pity mingled with self-righteousness. [However, here] It takes hysterical and contradictory forms: thus one is instructed loudly that “everybody knows” the Jews blew up the World Trade Center — even though bin Laden is praised in the very same heated breath for doing it himself. The mullahs tell people that the Taliban are correct to ban all pictures and photographs and television and film, because the representation of the human form is profane. But the T-shirts displaying bin Laden’s oddly epicene features are on sale right outside the mosque.
If this president wished to lower the amount of terrorism in the world (which I have constantly shown he does not, for the record) he would be trying to create economic stability in these countries instead of sanctioning them, as opening up the market of Iran was one of the best moves of the Obama administration.
However, here is what the administration would prefer to do (from Reuters)
U.S. attempts to drive Iranian oil exports down to zero come against the backdrop of a global market that is sufficiently well supplied to avoid price disruptions, senior U.S. officials said on Thursday.
We saw during the Obama administration radicalism in Iran went down significantly after the Iran Deal removed sanctions on Iran. This is because extremism is bred out of two conditions: lack of basic human needs and being denied the option of sovereignty. The United States has violated both these principles which cause extremism, and then continue to do such actions to counter extremism.
Reducing exports from Iran will do nothing but make a poor country poorer, which will do nothing but further turn them against the United States. Leaders are aware of this. In the early 90s, then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright told 60 Minutes the “costs” of sanctions against Iraq were “worth it.”
Make no mistake, this is all on purpose.
