do you know WHY these nations might be in such bad condition?

The Arab Human Development report written by Arabs, for Arabs, concludes that the causes, in majority, are internal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Human_Development_Report

WE generally strip them of their resources and abilities.

Oil was just at $80 a barrel. Who exactly is being stripped here?

You might want to ditch the belief that third worlders are dumb sheep with no minds of their own. In fact, they are perfectly capable of screwing up their own countries with no help from the West – and they do so with relentless determination.

Yes exactly whining babies…waaaa the mean man outmanuevered me and stole my stuff. Its not fair. Waaaaaaaaaaa…..

The funny thing about this is that at the same time that you declare such societies to be equal to the West you complain that we are unfair to them. How can equals be unfair?

Alternate history, where the USA wasn’t horribly led in the 70s, might have us–all of us, everywhere on the planet–today enjoying a peaceful, prosperous world devoid of serious conflict.

Think about it.

If you want to criticize the fall of USSR-friendly Mossedegh, then go ahead–yes, the “great game” between the spheres of USSR & USA did result in a lot of superpower meddling in the so-called third world, and it’s regrettable.

So, I ask you to keep in mind the historical context–who was the world-domination-intent aggressive force, and who was essentially the defensive “containment” force?

IOW, USA had a choice, to engage USSR on the terms it created, or to withdraw, and cede to USSR whatever lands it wanted to put under its control–and this assuredly included all the lands enroute to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf.

Had USSR’s plans not been thwarted by USA resistance, the oil riches of the middle east would entered the USSR asset base–and there would have been no bankrupting fall of world communism, no bloodless way to stop 20th-century fascism from taking permanent hold of the globe.

The Shah was an ally of the USA, and Jimmy Carter–and the Marxists in his brain-trust–brought him down. The new boss then repaid Carter with the hostage-taking, which had the one good effect of finally opening the little zealot’s eyes for him–too late for peace in the world, too late for Carter’s presidency, too late for the Shah, too late to nip Jihad in the bud, and too late for the people of Iran.

All these terrible effects were enabled by a world public opinion mesmerized by the power of such decontexted stand-alone bumper-sticker slurs as “puppet government”.

Heather is right–ideas matter. And ideas are carried with words.

The west started making better lives for its people precisely when it separated church & state and thereby released science to go where it could.

You inadvertently admit as much yourself, when you say that Iran was once and recently “forward-looking” –well, that would have been under the Shah, right?

And your complaint against the Shah’s human-rights violations–how much of that is true and how much is propaganda? I mean the degree & severity of the Shah’s defensive war against the rebels–has it or has it not been over-hyped by the western left?

Have you ever researched the question? What about the mass executions and political prisons that sprang up instantly under the new boss Khomeini?

Have you looked into how the Shah became the Carter admin’s target to promote his ‘human rights’ theme, right when the Shah was facing the Islamist/socialist insurgency being run by Khomeini from Paris?

Well, let’s just make crime legal everywhere–because somebody somewhere made every criminal “that way”.