Sums up a lot of what is going on- Editorial from Lebanon 

The way i see it from Non, he gets his info from a source that tells him "Don't worry, Iran isn't anything to be afraid of" and won't even consider anything else.
He's young though, and i think that might be what influences him. I have been around alot longer, and though age alone doesn't mean I'm right, i have seen how the world REALLY works.
Israel is like the little kid on the playground, who just wants to be left alone. While places like Iran and Iraq are school bullies, looking to take away the little kid's lunch money and beat the crap out of him. So we step in to try to keep the bullies off him, and the bullies then turn on us.
Some would rather have us turn our back on the little kid, and let him get killed.
The guy i told you about, when i was first introduced to him, i asked him where he was from. You know what his answer was? "From that CRAZY country". I had no idea what he meant, until he TOLD me straight out, Iran.
Even HE knew how his country was viewed. I wonder why that was? They have some very radical groups there. And though not all people there agree with those wacky views, there is a bigger amount there then probably anywhere else in the world. And if you take their leader (I don't know how to spell his name) lightly, you could end up litterally in a WORLD of trouble. The guy hates us, period. And he wants a BIG gun. What do you think he would do with it?
If you want to trust the guy, that's ok. I HOPE i NEVER have to say "I TOLD you so!"
You are entitled to your opinion. Though nothing you have written has swayed me into thinking Iran (or Iraq for that matter) can be trusted.
Heck.....they can't even get along with each other, let alone the rest of the world. That should tell you something.

---

Israel likes to tell you they're the little kid on the playground who just wants to be left alone. Their PR department is simply awesome.

Truth is, they're none of those countries are angels, Israel included. Look up the USS Liberty. I'm still pissed at them for that, especially for downright lying about what happened. They had pilots who confessed that they knew what they were doing all along.

We shouldn't be giving that country shit. Actually, we shouldn't be giving anyone any of our hard-earned tax money. It's sickening.

Screw them all. The middle east will always be at war. 100 years from now, they'll be fighting. 1000 years from now, they'll be fighting. 100 years ago, they were fighting. 1000 years ago, they were fighting.

Let them kill each other. Both sides are bad guys, and both sides "started it." Israel just does wonders with American heart strings and has us all convinced they're wittle angels.

Not at all knocking you, Alan. You're a very intelligent man. Israel's lobby is strong and they did a good job hiding the truth from Americans. If you knew the torture they deploy and how racist they are as people, they're not any better than the rest of them.

As for Iran, I'm somewhere between you and Non. I know they have their lunatics who hate us. They also have a strong educated youth who love everything we do.

American pop culture is banned there. So of course I'm on the internet chatting to some kids in Iran via IRC, and even though American pop music is banned, I ask them who their favorite American musical artists are. So they start spouting out all these pop bands and I'm sitting there laughing as they're just like American teenagers.

It could go either way. The good guys can win out and have assassinations by the crazies, or the bad guys can win out and have an underground resistance by the good guys. Both are bad for us but one is obviously better than the other. The best thing for America to do is get out of that region asap. Waste of money.

---

The kids learn from their elders. That is where the "hate" begins. If they COULD get a strong opposition there, maybe they could stop trying to kill each other, AND us.

Sad fact is, there will always be terrorist groups. And they will always have the desire to kill as many of us as they can.

---

Alan, the reason why it's impossible to debate you is you don't actually address any of the points made to you. I have provided you with fact after fact after fact, none of which you have addressed, and you have failed to provide no sources beyond your own personal experience with one particular person who may or may not have been yanking your chain.

Did it ever occur to you that your Iranian friend maybe have been using sarcasm when he called his country "crazy" -- you know, throwing the ill-informed words and opinions of Americans back in your face? I know when people from other countries (Japan, Iraq, Germany, etc.) have made ignorant, ill-informed statements about America, I have often played along by making such sarcastic comments. It's what you do.

Furthermore, to imply that I get all my information from Reason magazine is ludicrous -- to my knowledge, I'd never read the magazine until yesterday. You completely ignore and discount all my other sources, including media reports, historians, and yes, personal interviews on the ground with TERRORISM SUSPECTS and choose to ridicule one source I use -- and worse, mischaracterize the basis of my arguments and even my arguments themselves. For example, nowhere have I stated that Iran or Iraq can be trusted as countries; I have stated explicitly that they are regional threats. Just because I don't think they are threats to the United States doesn't mean I think they are trustworthy counties: The chained bulldog down the street doesn't present any substantive represent a threat to my personal safety, but that doesn't mean I consider it a trustworthy dog, nor would I encourage my children to walk up and pet it.

I have a lot of respect for you as a person, Alan, but you have to admit logical, nuanced argument is not your strong suit. You argue primarily based on emotion. That's not a knock on you, it's just a fact.

---

Lets see....you trust the accounts of TERRORISM SUSPECTS. Like they would be 100% honest.
Amazing how you trust the words of people that would love to kill you, but disreguard the words of someone like me because i'm "emotional?"
Thats ok.
I of course, would put my life litterally on the line to protect you, while the guys you want to protect would kill you without a second thought.
Thats your right, of course.
You KNOW i could find just as many "facts" that would be 100% against your "facts" if i wanted to. There are web sites that back what i say as well. But i KNOW you would just right it off as "crazy right wing" stuff.
So why should i waste my days, trying to influence someone, that mo matter WHAT i say, will ignore it?
Others have posted stuff that leans more towards what i say.
I noticed that most of what you post is straight out of the left. You treat this place as your own playground, posting all this political leaning stuff. The only reason i bother to write in these threads is that alot of people read this stuff, and i want then to know it's ok to not agree with everything you say. There are alot of people that think as i do, but won't post because they know you will try to back them into a corner. Me, i don't care if you try. As far as what i have seen, you still haven't posted anything you can say is "fact". It's ONLY someone elses opinion, that you have chosen to embrace.
LEFTY so and so writes something you agree with, thus, that makes it "fact" At least in your eyes.

---

Most readers of Reason (I've been one for years) would reject being labelled as "left" out of hand. And, oddly, most of those who call themselves "left" call Reason readers -- dominated by libertarians -- "ultra-right" or "ultra-conservative."

And both are equally erroneous descriptions. While the average libertarian may often agree with conservatives on matters of state v. market, they will profoundly disagree on matters of individual morality and freedom; and while they'll agree with the lefties on certain matters of individual rights, they'll vehemently disagree with them on economic and political planning.

The very notion that beliefs can be easily be reduced to a one-dimensional distinction between "left" and "right" is profoundly flawed. One that, were this guy  writing today, he'd likely decry.

I don't think of NSD as a leftie (though I often think of him as "wrong") and I don't think of Cheesey as a rightie (though I often think of him as "wrong", too).

I find here that I'm disagreeing with both of you this time, but not because I am "in the middle".

I disagree with Cheesey because I think NSD is right about what we really have to fear from Iran. We Americans, individually or as a country, just aren't in that kind of danger.

Sure, there are Iranians who hate us and go on youtube to make us aware of it. But you can't destroy a nation of 300 million souls with a youtube, or even with a couple suitcase nukes. Yeah, the prospect of a couple more 9/11's is chilling, but it isn't enough to make it worth take sides in any tribal war.

And that's what Israel vs. whoever is. Nothing more than a tribal war between barbarian tribes.

Put it this way: immediately after 9/11, one often heard refrains with a "Never Again!" sort of sentiment. In my opinion such thinking is extremely dangerous, and our collective toleration of the tyranny called the Patriot Act proves it.

"Never again" should be reserved to true Holocaust-level actions -- things like ethnic cleansing and the killing fields and, yes, the Holocaust itself. Not to actions that blow up a couple big buildings and kill the equivalent of a small city.

If one's perspective is the 300 million or "the nation", it's just bad policy to try to prevent every wrong.

Which leads me to why I don't stand fully with NSD here, either. I don't think national policy should be made based on our fears of terrorist groups or individuals, be they Al-Qaeda or Tim McVeigh. But I do think the story changes if what we are talking about is state-sponsored terrorism.

Because when states get involved in the terrorist process, the true Holocausts can occur. In fact, ALL of the holocausts have come because states were involved and giving sanction to the terrorist activity. The original Reign of Terror took place under the aegis of the Committee on Public Safety. (Like so many bad ideas, state-sponsored terrorism was a French innovation?) The Holocaust was sanctioned by the German state, and acceded to by others for years. The killing fields -- the Khmer Rouge. The harvest of sorrow -- the USSR. And so on and so on and so one. Yeah, Osama did the nasty to several thousand. State sponsored terrorism has killed tens, perhaps hundreds of millions.

So I can see the possibility that it might be necessary to worry about Iran's ability to sponsor terrorism. (Not whether Irani citizens or fanatics might, but whether the Irani state might.) Though if you want to worry about state-sponsored terrorism, I'd be a lot more worried about Saudi Arabia and *its* resources being brought to bear for the bad guys than I'd ever be about the Iran and its resources.

But if I'm truly worried about a terrorist state, I'm not going to mess around with all the usual approaches of the late twentieth century. I'm not going to worry about political niceties and world antipathy toward imperialism/colonialism etc. I'm going to go in the way the USA eventually went into WWI and its Reconstruction -- for the duration until the bastards are dead or glowing and doing things the way civilized people did.

The Iranians, the Israelis, the whoevers, they're not going to get "control" back until they do like the Japanese and the Germans did and get civilized and *they* say "Never again."

But you see, this is why, even though I might be okay with US "adventurism" in many places that NSD would not, I can't agree with Cheesey either.

Because there simply is no way the USA has to itself worry about Iran committing a Holocaust-level attack against it. Even if we somehow abolished Foster's beloved Corps, the rest of the US military, and the American people, would stomp them like a bug if they tried.

If there's a Holocaust possibility, its only because one tribe in the Middle East is interested in committing it against another.

Now that might be the case. There is that "thousands of years of history" thing, after all.

But if we are to get involved, the only possibly legitimate moral grounds for doing so must be in preventing such a Holocaust. Not in making the world "safe for democracy" or similar claptrap. But in making the world democratic. A very different thing

Unless and until America is willing to make that latter claim -- and deal with the heat that it will bring down on them -- they should stay out. Let the tribes beat the crap out of each other. Recognize that occasional a loose crazy from one of the tribes might cross over the ocean. But don't build this edifice of "political need" for the "nation" in some other vague way.

I keep coming back to Orwell. The essay linked was written in 1946. Like much of Orwell's writing, it wasn't particularly well received, either by those people like to call "left" or those people like to call "right."

But it was even more prescient than his more famous novels. Because, as he pointed out to his British readership, the long run dangers faced were not the language distortions and sins of Hitler and Goebbels. The long run dangers were the ones that when free and good men played loose and imprecise and vague with their words.

As Orwell put it, political speech becomes "largely the defence of the indefensible."

In my opinion the greatest danger we face is not this or that politician, it's not even the "government" that I love to rail about. The greatest danger is our lack of detailed attention to our language. Orwell said that "the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them"; I fear that we may have already done so.

---

They probably would have no problem bombing the shit out of us. When ever they feel the urge, now they have the tools....GREAT

Do we really think, that they just actually became nuclear enabled?

Additionally... they may fire upon us first, but based on our shear size and infrastructure, they can't take us out all at once. We however, based on their size and infrastructure can certain deal major impacts to their overall health much more rapidly.

Should we be aware.. absolutely, but no more aware than other nuclear powers that aren't exactly on our friends list.

Overall point.. if we as a nation can have nuclear weapons and have the threat, whom in the hell are we to say others can't? We just have to deal with the fact they have the ability and prepare where we can.

Lord help us, if any friggin idiot, regardless of origin, hits the fire button.

---

Thats the problem Shawn. We here arn't going to be quick to push the trigger. But people like the guy running Iran or North Korea arn't normal, rational thinking people. We are dealing with people like Adolph Hitler was.
And when you are dealing with madmen, you don't know what they will do.

It's like handing a nuke to a guy like Charles Manson in my view. You don't know for sure WHAT they will do, but you can be pretty sure it won't end up good.

Wade, i doubt that they can wipe out the U.S. But a few suitcase bombs can cause problems here that would wipe out alot of people. Yes, there are alot of us, and they can't easily kill us all. But how safe will it make you feel for you and your loved ones if a few of these bombs are set off across our nation? The safe feeling we have enjoyed will be destroyed.
In Europe, where they HAVE bombed places, they never can feel safe.
I don't want it like that here. And anything we can do to send a message BEFORE it happens that we won't sit on our hands and do nothing till we get attacked, a preventitive method, is better in my opinion.
With North Korea, the horse has already been let out of the barn. Closing the door now won't stop them.
I have nothing against nations that have some self control having nuclear weapons. It's the nut cases like i have pointed out that scare me.

---