I loved this lengthy analysis of yours and can’t agree more. It’s not people who are bad, it’s governments that are bad. We The People are an apathetic lot and deserve great blame for letting our leaders be taken over by the special interests, but Washington has capitulated so completely that we ordinary folk are hostages to the interest groups, no matter what we say or who we elect. We no longer have a meaningful voice at a decision making level.

On to Iran! Pure madness! And yet the NYT gives over its pulpit to a supremacist calling for preemptive nuclear war against a sovereign nation which has not been credibly shown to have enriched uranium beyond the 3% required for the generation of nuclear power, and which has the explicit right to do so according to the terms of the NPT to which it is a signatory and the Great and Little Satans are not.

Even if the evil mullahs are pursuing nukes, who can blame them? They live in a very dangerous neighborhood in alarming times and nowhere is it written that America and her allies alone can be trusted with such weapons. It is pure chauvinism to believe otherwise. This is not a call for more nukes, it is a call for a rational foreign policy that has our national interest clearly in view, which decidedly is not being served when we or are friends brandish the nuclear saber. All this does is drive our adversaries to seek a nuclear deterrent of their own.

On to Iran, i.e. the SW component of your piece. You are correct when you say that reception of The Voice Of Justice is problematic, but several years ago when I was active in the hobby I painstakingly listened to this program and transcribed as best I could successive broadcasts which I sent to Tehran. In return, the Voice Of Iran sent me a QSL card and some other goodies. They also extended a written invitation to interview me for a segment to be run on the Voice Of Justice. As a citizen of questionable standing in Dick Cheney’s America I did not take them up on their offer though I must say I was tempted. Though I deplore this Pax Americana which has wrought so much despair and destruction across the world in the name of Truth, Justice, And The American Way, I did not want to provide any grist for our putative enemy’s propaganda mill, or give the Enemy At Home any further reason to reserve space for me in one of KBR’s detention camps when the Long Emergency comes and the Constitution is suspended (officially). Doubtless I died one of the thousand deaths to which I am heir.

There’s plenty of bad governments around the world. These days none spread the death and despair so far beyond their borders as America has under Bush.

And It irks me when Westerners drum up support for tyrannical regimes too– like the U.S. giving Israel FAR more foreign aid than we give any other nation (much of which is used to occupy Palestine), and the Olympic committee letting China host the games this year.

I think it’s somewhat disingenuous to suggest that supporters of wars against tyrants are supporting “mass murder, hatred, mayhem and despair”. In the case of Iran all those things are already there, and are exactly what overthrowing tyrants is supposed to *stop*. What we disagree about is the *method*.

Incidentally, the likes of Armedinnerjacket need enemies too to drum up support for their tyrannical regime. It irks me when Westerners help them.