GOOD IDEA

Winning Argument. Probably the ideal form of web-based discourse, at least according to my taste.

MORE (7/13): Dave Fried agrees!

HOW DID I GET HERE?

wierd Germans

crappy Guatemala

"tony snow is an idiot"

swine mating pictures-only

Swine mating?

STUFF

Thanks to the following folks who have linked here recently:

Kevin O'Keefe

Oveis

Religion & Society

Iddybud

Brayden King

The American Street

Robert Taylor (is that the Robert Taylor from days of yore?!) [Actually, no, unless he's lying about his age. Nice site so far, though.]

Kate

Approximately Perfect

Amanda Doerty (a.k.a. Hot Abercrombie Chick)

Transblawg

Kevin Yaroch

And, thanks, especially, to Thomas Nephew, whose site you should read early and often. For example, read his recent follow-up post on a lawsuit against Rent-way over time-shaving.

Also, if you don't already, be sure to take a look at David Fried's Left Oblique, Unfogged, Michael Froomkin's Discourse.net, and the Sassy Lawyer.

While you're here, on the other hand, read the comments. They're good. Thanks, folks!

Note also that I've replaced the Feedster search with a Pico search (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Finally: this will be a light posting week for a variety of reasons.

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN, SORT OF(?)

From Gaddis Smith, American Diplomacy During the Second World War, 1941-1945, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1985):

The American approach toward Iran during the war was a blend of humanitarian sentiment and self-interested calculation. President Roosevelt and some of his advisors saw Iran, much as many Americans had seen and still saw China, as a friendly, backward land eager to accept American tutelage in everything from agricultural reform to finance, education, and police organization. Roosevelt said he was 'thrilled by the idea of using Iran as an example of what we could do by an unselfish policy. We could not take on a more difficult nation than Iran. I should like, however, to have a try at it.' For the State Department this meant social as well as economic reform. As one commetary noted in 1944: 'One of the main tasks . . . is to break this stranglehold of the entrenched classes and to insure for the mass of the Iranians a fairer share in the proceeds of their labor.' No one asked at the time whether the United States could achieve such an objective. American self-interest focused – to quote another State Department policy paper in 1944 – on 'the possibility of sharing more fully in Iran's commerce and in the development of its resources; the strategic location of Iran for civil air bases; and the growing importance of Iranian and Arabian oil fields.' (101-2)

Note two things. First, the Roosevelt administration's idea of intervention in Iran took place in the shadow of WWII and increased concerns over the potential for exhaustion of allied oil reserves (Smith 103), but the humanitarian aim is present nonetheless. The stated goals of the policy are quite different from the Bush administration's stated goals in contemporary Iraq, however. Whereas Roosevelt's State Department policy was apparently concerned with inequalities and popular access to good jobs, the Bush administration's policy is primarily focused on removing a ruling party and promising to provide basic political political freedoms, especially the vote. I think that the different emphases shed light on the two administrations' different approaches to power and its effect on society.

Second, American postwar policy in Iran was not a great success in the long run. (I admit that I don't know much about the period 1945 – 1980, though.) Will Iraq be any different?