This is a rather fantastic blog post about the likelyhood of going to war with Iran. Part of the premise is that when new weapons are available they are described publicly in order to instill fear in the enemy, then those weapons have to be used (can’t just play a game of international chicken now, can we?)
Then, in yet another installment of Do you trust your government, go read this piece in LeMonde Diplomatique right now. Remember Iraq and WMDs? Remember the Al Quaida links? It might be in our best interest to REALLY question the motives of our government for starting yet another war, even if it means letting a totalitarian Islamic government (that is not friendly to us) stay in power. You know, democracy by force is still tyranny.
In my opinion, this issue is not about democracy/tyranny. It’s about how to deal with the Iran problem.
Right now Europeans seem to be more in trouble with Islam than Americans are. It would be interesting to see how they deal with the Iran problem. (I doubt that US would go into war with Iran at this point for both economic and political reasons).
It’s democracy because that will be the number 2 public reason for going to war with Iran. The number 1 reason being fear of nuclear weapons.
The US won’t go into Iran alone, unlike Iraq. But the problems with the premise for invasion are the same. You should know- it’s damn near impossible to prove a negative (like we are not building WMDs)
It’s begining to look like Samuel Huntingdon’s Clash of Civilizations theory was correct (I wish it weren’t- he’s a eurocentric pisshead) and the fact that Europeans are having difficulties with muslims just means that fear of muslims taking over will increase here as Americans sympathize with France.