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Wow. Attacked on two fronts! I must have said something inappropriate? I'll deal with the easy one first:
tommy1733, I'm really hurt that a guy who doesn't believe anyone should ever use harsh language has called me 'naive'. Actually, I am not that naive on this one, though. You are naive if you do not realize that Iran, or maybe more properly Persia is a root culture, and as such has as deep ties to as many people, maybe more, than the root cultures in China and in the Middle East.
It's also, for that reason, a hated culture by the peoples of the Mediterranean and surrounds, the current expounder of that hatred may be Israel, but before Israel, it was Rome, and before that Greece. Go watch '300' and see. I don't think the 'non-naive' set, such as yourself, realize to what extent a large swath of Asia would see a war on Iran as a war on brown people, to say nothing of the people who look up quizzically whenever, on this board recently, for instance, people try to say that the forever hatred of the West is the Jews, without ever noticing how many Europeans and Americans sat down to a breakfast of croissants this morning.
They hang gay children there? Well, the Japanese say Americans eat prisoners of war, too. Perhaps China should be a model for them, since you aren't upset by commerce with China? After all, they jailed their AIDS doctors, throw Falun Gong adherents out of windows and burn them to death, and send the families of executed prisoners a bill for the bullet used in the execution. And the Pakistanis bury women alive. And Rejali documents electrotorture (torture by hooking up magnetos to peoples body parts and turning the crank) in the 21st century by Canadians.
Iran as an ally, a partnership of equals, would be invaluable. Consider where it is located, and the strong attachments it can form with surrounding nations, not to mention what we could get culturally from a well formed democratic state there. We created such a partnership of their traditional rivals, Western Europe, after their genocidal world-threatening spree in the twentieth century, and were not threatened by multiple nuclear powers, thriving cultures and economies, and premier universities.
There are an awful lot of countries for whom the goals are a return to former intellectual and cultural glory, and equality with the great nations in diplomacy, and little else (except internal economics). Going through another decade without learning how to deal with that is like putting off dealing with global warming. Iran would be a good place to start. Great change always comes out of crisis, we need to start with a traditional enemy to make this particular change.
And now on to maureenodonnell:
ondelette, the Christians you describe are nothing like any Christians I know. Perhaps you should clarify that this is an American variant of Christianity just as your American democracy seems more like a plutocracy than the idealised USA as propounded by your founding fathers. Are you even aware that there's a world beyond America and that there are Maronite Christians in Lebanon, Orthodox Christians in Greece and also in Russia........The world is much more complex than the children's picture book that is interminably suggested by far too many Americans.
You're right. I, being a dumb American, don't know anything about anything except 'children's picture book' views of the world. I'm sorry. You mean you're a Christian and you aren't trying to take over our banks and media? Well, I'll be!
