America has been stirring in Iran since before I was born.
If your profile information is correct, then you were born just two days after I was. And I remember, very clearly,when the real trouble started in Iran, which is at the root of all the trouble that we've had with them since then, and all the trouble that we've had with violent Islamist-based terrorism, since then.
And I'll tell you one thing—it was not in the two days between the time I was born, and the time you were born. We were both in our late teens, when it occurred.
There's a big difference here, Bob. I had my nose in Art History, French, College Literature, Design, and Theatre, not to mention adjusting to another culture on the West Coast, far from my homeland of Texas when I was in my late teens and I failed to notice most politics except I was perplexed by John F. Kennedy's assassination as to why anyone would want him dead. So I rolled with the blows and went with the flow as best I could, married, worked, and left for Casper, Wyoming with his job transfer and a baby son in my arms. So you'll have to fill me in, because for the next couple of decades, it was all about raising a family and making a home as best I could. I voted without fail, but was independent until alcoholism destroyed the marriage, so I worked until they made me leave my job when I married the company engineer. lol He was a Republican, so I didn't know much about conservatives, but he was such a good husband and father to the children, I grew to think of conservatives as all being as wonderful as him, the best man who ever lived to make everybody else happy as his bread and butter of life. In Wyoming, people are all equal, so it was another culture shock of arranging life around very interesting habits of the laconic locals I grew to love and appreciate. They needed a sunday school teacher at church, so all my intellectual efforts were channeled to understanding age-appropriate bible stories for children, and decorating the classroom with artwork full time along with joining the Westwind Gallery's Artists' guild for some time later on. Then one day, my husband's company transferred him to Oregon, so we pulled up stakes and went to one of the prettiest places I have ever seen in the Willamette Valley, where my daughter announced I was to leave her 3 blocks from the school so her classmates would not know she had a mother who drove her to schoool. lol. So I enrolled in College again, maternally useless to either child in the house. After 5 years, my husband was transferred back to the Equality State, with a second double-promotion and headed all Engineering and high wire personnel in his company's easternmost 3-state area, and I opened a fiber arts business which I also ran for the next 23 years, when we retired to a warmer climate, back home to Texas (yea!) I didn't understand why President Clinton was re-elected, considering the trouble he had gotten himself in with the ladies, so I went online one day to find out what would cause people to re-elect a dolt who treated his wife poorly and his girlfriends even worse. It was confusing, because I was used to the laid-back atmosphere and kindliness of Wyoming Republicans and Democrats teasing each other about solutions that differed in politics. The NYTimes Forums is where I went to and was shocked by the rhetoric, mainly, so I hid out in the friendly Haiku Forum most of the time. But when I mentioned on one of the political forums I was going to root for Dubya, I realized east coast folks aren't one bit laid back about friendly solutions to the nation's politics, but I didn't back down and play dead like they expected.
That's enough for now. So yes, I was mad when I heard the Iraquis tried to assassinate President George H.W. Bush, and that's when I started reading about the Middle East and read Madeline Albright's quite thorough Secretary of State notes about Iraq and other places in the Middle East. I became mildly aware that Saddam Hussein was more thug than diplomat, that he gassed Iraq citizens in 30 or more villages in the Kurdish speaking regions of Iraq, and that he didn't get along with even one of his neighbors at all.
That's enough for now. Iran's war made me cry. They ran their little kids who were excedingly poor through minefields to find them for the army, telling them that dying for Allah would bring them everything they ever wanted, and poked them with iron sticks if they wavered when another kid was blown up. So much for reading Mrs. Albrights' fastidious notes on the Middle East countries.
It's past my bedtime Cya tomorrow, Mr. Blaylock. G'nite all.
