Word: persian
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IRONICALLY, CARTER has resorted to flag-waving in order to hide his domestic failures, when solutions to these very problems--particularly that of energy--would best cure America's foreign policy headaches in the Persian Gulf. The region is a vital American interest only because American greed has made it so. To impose an emergency energy plan, complete with gasoline rationing, would be a far stronger policy than to reinstitute draft registration...
...same grandiose economic plans and spending that tore apart Iranian society and drove the Shah from power now threaten other conservative societies in the Persian Gulf. These oil-producing states have spent most of their revenues on the ambitious development of petrochemical and other heavy, "prestige" industries, to the neglect of traditional economic activities, like fishing, agriculture and cattle-raising, which would distribute oil wealth more widely. As an article in The New York Times recently noted, "with that neglect came the disruption of the lifestyle of large segments of the population, particularly of the Bedouins, who are the backbone...
...domestic upheaval in the region, the key foreign policy question for America is not the absence of military power but its impotence. America's experience in Vietnam attests to the efficacy of foreign intervention in a popular insurrection. In fact, a more visible American military presence in the Persian Gulf would only associate friendly monarchs even more closely with a Westernizing United States, at a time when they are frantically seeking to dissociate themselves from it instead...
Moreover, radicals could counter any American military action by mining the narrow Straits of Hormuz, through which practically all of the Persian Gulf oil flows to the West. While two or three burning oil tankers in the waterway would be a fiery spectacle for American television viewer, it would not be a pretty sight for Western policymakers. Although many American hearts would pound at the sight of our boys jumping off helicopters onto the Arabian sands, emotions don't light homes...
...whip his ass." Then, standing in the glare of TV lights in the House of Representatives, the President sent the Soviets a forceful warning in his State of the Union address: "Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." To make that warning more credible, Carter reversed a policy of just a few months ago and decided...