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Originally Posted by Sidd Finch
Okay, this is some scary shit. Even leaving aside whether this draws the US in, the entire fucking region is poised to go up in flames. Thank goodness we invaded Iraq to start the waves of democracy rolling.
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[BAD JOKE] At last a war I can believe in, where coffee is at stake. [/BAD JOKE]
Here is the
best primer I have found on Yemen. And even though it's a couple months old it's not even out of date yet! It is also particularly useful because it highlights that the best reason to object to the Houthis has nothing to do with their religion, which none of us have ever heard of anyway; it is instead because they are dickheads.
It is a little dismaying how much more enthusiastic much of this "Coalition for Legitimacy" is for crushing the Houthis as compared to the fight against ISIS. But it's good KSA is such a strong ally.
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Maybe. So long as the ayatollahs are in power, it's hard to see that happening, and I suspect they are willing and able to do things that even the Shah couldn't do to hold onto power. The Shahs soldiers chose not to shoot protestors, but the religious militias would make a different choice.
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Up until almost the very end, the Shah was thinking conservative Islam might support him against the greater common threat of westernized types with socialist and democratic tendencies, and then he began realizing he might need to buy off the damned democrats and socialists in order to protect himself from the Ayatollahs. The decision not to shoot wasn't an ethical thing.
