Sorry for my absense... Update with links.

In this article Robert Kagan compellingly talks about the need for the US stimulating regime change in Iran:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012602122.html

I totally agree that the collapse of Iran's regime would be a blessing, but consider the following quote from the article: "Given the role that the Islamic theocracy in Tehran has played in leading and sponsoring anti-democratic, anti-liberal and anti-Western fanaticism for the past three decades, the toppling or even substantial reform of that regime would be second only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its ideological and geopolitical ramifications. "

It's true that Iran has inspired many fanatics and funded a few others, but how many groups have grown out of Saudi sponsored Madrassas? How likely is it that this argument would actually convince the government to put pressure on Saudi Arabia's policies?

But apart from this gripe, the main fault of this article (and others like it) is that it fails to mention what exactly the US can do to support the opposition movement in Iran, other than to cheer them along.

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A more powerful piece of prose is the letter of a former consular staff to his collueages, urging them to resign as he did. Here's a fragment of the letter:

Dear Colleagues,

Oppressed people like Ayatollah Montazeri had to go through a lifetime of suppression. We observed these crimes and excused them. We lived in residences payed by the dollars of the same people who were killed. Yet, we hugged and kissed our children in our wealthy households.

We boasted to foreigners about a Saadi poem inscribed in the United Nations building: “One Limb impacted is sufficient.” We boasted that Imam Ali cried when a Jewish women was humiliated. We boasted that it is our religious duty to disclaim tyranny and to take the side of the oppressed. Now that the Supreme Council for National Security has confirmed the killings of youth under torture, have we forgotten all of that?

How many verses of the Prophet and Imams did we memorize about justice and oppression?
“If one sharpens the pen of an oppressor, he shares the oppression.”
“If one gives a bit of silk for an oppressor to use in his ink, he shares the oppression.”
...

For the full letter, go to: http://persian2english.com/?p=5238

Has the US already lost Iran?

An interesting question about the foreign policy of Obama in regards to Iran. This article appeared in the New York Times a few days ago:

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/thatseemsfair/nyt005.html

Good reading.

The US, Atheism and Seperation of Church and State

Salon has a very interesting article on the secular beliefs of early American politicians. It is important for us to understand that the current level of religion in the political domain is fairly recent. We now have an "Islamic Republic" of Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, where before there was none. We have "In God We Trust" and "One Nation Under God", also fairly recent.

Here's a quote from the article: "In Washington's day, it may have been reasonable for the elite to worry that only fear of hellfire kept the masses from running amok, but in the 21st century it is clear that democracy as a form of government does not require citizens who believe in supernatural religion. Most of the world's stable democracies are in Europe, where the population is largely post-Christian and secular, and in East Asian countries like Japan where the "Judeo-Christian tradition" has never been part of the majority culture."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/14/christian_nation/