I remember in 1992 Clinton ran against continuing China’s “most favored nation” trading status with the U.S. until they cleaned up their human-rights record. He dropped that after taking office; probably he was confronted with just how much removing China’s MFN status would disrupt the American economy. I recall a cartoon (Oliphant, I think) from the period – Clinton is eating in a Chinese restaurant. Caption: “Crispy crow with Most Favored noodles! I love Chinese food!”
You think a two democracies and a number of relatively secular, somewhat tolerant countries being replaced by totalitarian dictatorships ruled by a combination of Sharia and Velayet-e faqih is “no big deal”?
Perhaps not to you, but certainly most of the people of Lebanon, Iraq and other countries would disagree.
Frankly, I think the odds of that happening are incredibly slim regardless of what Iran does, for a number of reasons(for example the Iraqi government while quite pro-Iranian hasn’t been willing to transform themselves into an Iran-style theocracy and the Hezbollah hasn’t proven as successful in Lebanon as they’d like) but it takes an extreme amount of callousness and indifference to say “no big deal”.
As for my “myopia”, well, I have family their so obviously I do care.
You seem to be arguing that Lebanon being transformed from a fairly secular democracy into a totalitarian theocracy isn’t going to be a threat to you in America so why should you care what happens to the women or gays of Lebanon, but most of us aren’t so self-serving and shallow in our motivations and outlook on the world.
Switch Sunni and Shiite around and you’d have the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc. disagreeing. To Americans, and certainly in the grand scheme of things, neither side is better than the other. Shiites may have Iran trying for nukes and Hizbullah attacking Israel, but Sunnis have their crazy Wahhabbi sect and Al Qaeda. Trying to advocate for one or the other makes no difference because both sides have very crazy extremists. Do I want to fight Hizbullah supported by Iran or Al Qaeda supported by Saudi Arabia? It doesn’t matter
Well, sorry about the family thing, I didn’t know, but its clear why you’d support one side over the other. To someone like me and the majority of Americans, it doesn’t matter because we see both sides as bad. If we argued over China and Taiwan, then maybe I’d have a different viewpoint, but I wouldn’t expect you to agree with me on that issue
I’m saying that if I have the power to magically make Iran democratic or Saudi Arabia, it makes little difference morally (unlike I have shares in oil companies) to me. They both deserve help, and they are both bad and in need of change. Maybe that’s a bad example because Saudi Arabia’s a bit more strict, but the gist of it is that helping one side of the Sunni/Shiite divide means less help for the other side and to me, someone who doesn’t have family there and a vested interest, I might as well be flipping a coin
What excuse built support for invading Iraq? Yes it was false, but we invaded Iraq on the premise they had WMD. So nukes will stop us from invading Iran?
I am very much afraid this is closer to the thinking of the current leadership, who we have to deal with now. It is hard to see Kim Jong-il as a model of rationality and stability, but so far he has foregone use of his toys.
The pol who can turn Lebanon into a totalitarian anything deserves to be enthroned as God Emperor of the World.
Iraq was invaded because they didn’t really have nukes. Iran is going to really get them probably, and that will stop the invasion. The crisis time is now, between when they don’t have it and when they do, when the line is blurred between whether or not an attack would be enough to stop them. I believe that once Iran tests a nuke and comes out as a nuclear power, the invasion talk will soon cease