Thread: "EGYPT IS FREE!" - The Egyptian People Celebrate

Only partially. Oh, have they done something good when I wasn't looking?

Originally Posted by Ramil

Only partially. Oh, have they done something good when I wasn't looking?

Everything is measured in comparison. What have the Soviet Union done to the Middle East in those glorious days?
When it comes to Egypt, it was all sold inside out to the USSR until the mid 70 at which point it turned out it doesn't pay off to be allies with the USSR. Then Egypt found a new ally, the US and this way it got much more. Because of that, Egypt was one of the strongest allies to the US in the Middle East and, under Mubarak "Egypt was a member of the allied coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, and Egyptian infantry were some of the first to land in Saudi Arabia to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait." (Hosni Mubarak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) The US did not have any apparent reasons to change Mubarak, it was done by someone else. However, the US didn't save his long-term ally either. The gratitude of the politicians is proverbial... yeah...

Having said that, I'm not really sure what's the point of the caricature. It's not like the US didn't pay for the oil, did they? By the way, the Soviet Union exported their oil too, to those same capitalists, so why wouldn't they write СССР beside Ближний Восток?

As to the "blood" that is shed, I think the USSR should have sat quiet like a mouse, since the dominant majority of the Middle East countries have adopted the soviet weapons (until today) and the USSR was a major exporter of those weapons to the Middle East. On the other hand, Israel adopted NATO weapons. It has never been a secret the Middle East was a field testing for the soviet and the NATO weapons. (And not only the Middle East, by the way.)

Originally Posted by Crocodile

Everything is measured in comparison. What have the Soviet Union done to the Middle East in those glorious days?

It gave a shitload of money to African and Middle Eastern developing states, along with sending civilian specialists - engineers, doctors, constructors- to help with making better living conditions for locals. The more intersting question is what it got in return - nothing tangible, in my opinion, just something to rub into USA face (nuh-nuh-nuh, there are more and more "Socialistic" states), and a lot of meaningless promises. USSR was arguably the only empire, that foolishly invested HUGE money in its "colonies" and allies, instead of draining them dry as any other self-respected empire did.

Well, sure, we imported weapons too. Who did not at the time? ))

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

self-respecting empire

=====

Originally Posted by Crocodile

Whoa!! Please, explain yourself. What do you mean I switched the context?... Where do you think I crossed the line?

I think it happenned right bout there:

Originally Posted by Crocodile

Originally Posted by Ramil

Only partially. Oh, have they done something good when I wasn't looking?

Everything is measured in comparison. What have the Soviet Union done to the Middle East in those glorious days?

By 'they' I meant CIA (if you look at my previous remark)

Originally Posted by Crocodile

I assumed the CIA reports to the US government as well as the KGB/GRU used to report to the USSR government. The USSR used to help Egypt and the US used to help Egypt. Both military and infrastructure-wise.

Come on, you should at least suspect that not everything CIA does it reports to the US Government, not to mention the people In fact, I think the government sometimes prefers not to know anything about their 'accomplishments' in order not to be embarassed later.

Originally Posted by Ramil

By 'they' I meant CIA (if you look at my previous remark)

Ah, ok. Sorry about that. I looked at the caricature and I had an impression those who allegedly 'milked' the Middle East wore some 'capitalistic uniform', so I thought it's about the capitalists, and mainly the US as the primary enemy of the USSR back then. I didn't think that you only meant the CIA wearing those 'capitalist' clothes. I'd say if the artist had the CIA in mind, he would probably picture some 'James Bond' kind of a guy with a smoking gun and a sex bomb or something like that. But, never mind, that's not important.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Come on, you should at least suspect that not everything CIA does it reports to the US Government

Yes, I can agree with that. However, there's a HUGE distance between 'not everything' and make a series of revolutions in a couple of countries, won't you agree?

Originally Posted by Ramil

In fact, I think the government sometimes prefers not to know anything about their 'accomplishments' in order not to be embarassed later.

Yes, that is a good point. But again, the design of anything on a large scale cannot qualify as a 'black operation'. Come to think of it, I don't believe whenever the CIA boasts it was able to do something big like destroying the USSR from within by some kind of a smart tactics (i.e. keeping the oil down for a decade and stuff). Don't get me wrong, some of the CIA operatives are qualified enough to perform some very sophisticated things. But, when you try to design anything on a large scale, you notice the system is just too complex to be under control. Too many unpredictable/uncontrollable variables. And when you try to gather information about those variables, the situation had already changed.