Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Gopher]

Let me clarify my position on Iran, now that, unfortunately, words and concepts like "freedom" and "the Shariah state" are begining to be thrown around on this thread.

I think there is room in the world for a theocratic Iran and a democratic United States to coexist and perhaps even cooperate (and who says you have to like each other to do this?). I do not buy into Huntington's thesis. I also think that neither Iran nor the United States can or should claim virtue or moral superiority or whatever else idealists or their critics on either side might allege. This means that I do not believe that anyone, anywhere in the world, can claim the moral high ground -- especially not Tehran, not Caracas, and not Hezbollah or the Palestinians, either, in spite of all of their absurd claims to the contrary.

I simply think that, with respect to OP, Tehran is playing crude PR games and misrepresenting itself as a wronged Mother Teresa -- and this is laughable. And in case people of the Middle East have not figured this out by now, for various reasons, most of them I agree with, the United States is not going to abandon Israel to those who would not hesitate to annihilate it and drive its people into the sea.

All of this being said, if Tehran wants to negotiate with the United States of America, by all means, please go through official channels or backchannels, just like everybody else in the world. Playing drama games with "the American people" will, ultimately, accomplish little, and, as I said above, it might even backfire.

(By the way, this issue has received much more attn on this board that it has thus far in the United States.)

[spliff]