No Going Back!
What should the US do about the Iranian Crackdown?
What I want to do, and wish we could do, and really wish was a good idea, would be to voice official US support for the protestors of Iran , and, should a revolutionary act take place, I would hope that we would do everything possible to support that act of rebellion. I also wish it rained beer and that I looked a lot like Tom Selleck. If wishes were eagles then beggars would fly. I think Obama is doing the right thing in NOT voicing official support for an overthrow of the Iranian government.
There is a long history of foreign interference in the government of Iran . We have actually overthrown the government there before, and so there is great suspicion of the US . Many Iranians hate, or are deeply concerned by the actions of the US because we used our CIA to oust their legitimate government, and in setting up a US friendly dictator that oppressed the will of the Iranian people and acted as a puppet for the interests of the US. With that history it is essential that we not do anything that looks like we are doing again what we did back in the 1950s.
We may not like the Islamic fundamentalist theocracy that runs Iran now, but we are already in two wars, and not only can we not afford to be in a third war, it is possible that our interference in Iran could result, not in a third war, but in a third World War. There are many examples of oppression in the world, and there are many regimes that oppose democracy, and inflict oppression on their own people. We can’t go to war with every country in the world with whom we disagree. Would we want to go to war with every country that objected to the government of our country?
If the United States officially voiced support of Iranian protesters and those protestors felt our official verbal support implied support of their resistance to the Ayatollah, and if we then failed to send weapons or military forces to support the resistance when the Revolutionary Guard attacked them, then they would look at the US as a country that encouraged them to get into a fight, implied we would help if needed, and than didn’t. The somewhat US friendly Iranian protesters would feel used, they would feel sold out, and they would hate us with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.
I would like to see secular democratic governments replace Islamic Fundamentalist governments.
I would like to see Tibet free of the oppression of China . I wish every nation on earth was a secular democratically governed country, but that is where it ends. When foreign powers interfere in the political affairs of another sovereign government that interference is unwise and should only be done on very rare occasions when not to act would result in mass murder and xenophobia, and even then, that interference should not be the US alone, but it should be action supported by the United Nations via a vote of the UN and wide support of that interference via money and a generous contribution of their troops.
I should also point out that often when our moral umbrage is up, it may be because atrocities are taking place, but it may also have something to do with money and our National interests. For example, we are ready to attach go to war in Iraq and Iran, but we were not very interested in sending in the troops to Dorfur where the atrocities were clearer and begging for moral people to intervene and protect the innocent.
We are not the boss of the world. The US has no right to be the policeman of the world. The world is not an extension of the United States . We may be a super power, but the US is not the supreme authority over the entire world. The US is not the dictator of the earth; we are just a part of the world of nations.
Article submitted Sunday, June 21, 2009 & read 1440 times.
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