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Do you routinely hear people complain about the Iranian diaspora?
Something to that, I reckon.
Who's saying anything about an occupation?
I swear to god so many people have brainworms that any potential foreign intervention must be directly compared to the interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are other ways to do things than occupying and nation building. (Also, Iraq is doing ok these days.)
It's not just Iraq and Afghanistan, it's also Syria and Libya (that I remember off the top of my head). Also I'd be more ok with your idea if anyone was punished for these blunders, and gave the current batch of pro-intervention people something to think about.
Those are better comparisons for sure.
Syria is a case of a LACK of Western intervention, however. Assad got a ton of support from Russia and Iran, which is why he really started losing when both of those countries had to focus on more immediate problems.
Libya is pretty different from Iran in a host of ways. For one, Gaddafi wasn't a major thorn in our side at the time. The Islamic regime is an ongoing threat that could be removed.
In my essay, I talk about the risk of separatism. You can't have a perfect future guaranteed. The most successful military intervention the US ever did, according to most anyway, was WWII. Which ended up leading to the Cold War with the USSR as our primary enemy, and then the rise of China. Whoops.
In my view, this case seems fairly straightforward once you consider the possible outcomes relative to baseline. The Islamic regime is really bad for Iran and the world.
The leading alternatives to Assad were Al Qaeda and ISIS. It seems patently obvious that the Western-backed forces were objectively worse in nearly every way compared to Assad unless you're a Salafist, an Erdogan fan or an Israel-prioritizer (as in, elevating the narrow interests of Israel above all other considerations).
Assad is a major ally of Iran and Russia, traditional enemies of the US.
So far the Al Qaeda guy seems better than Assad.
Iran and Russia are only enemies of the American regime, Al Qaeda is an enemy of the American people.
The Al Qaeda guy is currently having ethnic and religious minorities thrown off of buildings, is that better than Assad?
Oh, I think Iran and Russia are just as much enemies of the American people as Al Qaeda is.
Regardless, can we do the math on how many people was Assad killing? I think it was more.
There's no great option here.
Sorry, could you remind me when Russia or Iran killed thousands of Americans on American soil? I seem to have forgotten.
Assad was fighting a civil war against hardened Salafis backed by half of the Middle East and the CIA whereas Al-Jolani is sending death squads to slaughter civilians protected by lightly armed militias to sell their families into slavery. If the death toll is even comparable it would indicate that the Al Qaeda terrorist is far worse than the secular dictator.
There is, actually; stay out of it entirely! Don't fund or provide air support for Al Qaeda!
For the overwhelming majority of American history, the US stayed out of Middle Eastern conflicts and miraculously during that time never had to fear the risk of conflict with Iran or Syria. It's only after the decision was made to support a certain new country that suddenly America found itself obligated to support head chopping Al Qaeda terrorists.
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There were two Iranian families in my hometown growing up (smallish town of about 30k people) thet had fled after the Shah was overthrown. One of the families had even converted to Mormonism and was a member of my congregation. The one in my my congregation was a wonderful family and I never heard any complaints about them (they had a son with some mental health issues but even that didn't really cause any problems). I had fewer interactions with the other, but the father of the other family was a school psychiatrist/counsellor at my high school and seemed like a decent guy.
But if someone pretty rabidly anti mass migration like me doesn't have any particular beef with Persians I think that's a pretty good sign of the character of the ones we have here in the US, at least the ones who came here in the 70's.
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