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And according to Ex-Pat in SE Asia, Russia and Pakland have helped the Iranians and they’ve completed enrichment phase.

Ehhh, maybe I can keep my old kitchen for another year and sock the money away.

In college, I tended to succumb to the “We’re no better than the so-called ‘Third World’” viewpoint so prevalent among intellectual wannabes. (Actually, it was more like, “We’re worse than the so-called ‘Third World’ in every way, and have much to learn from their ‘ancient wisdom’ and ‘elemental connectedness’ and blah blah whatever…”)

When you see the sheer, unadulterated idiocy that haunts so much of the Third World, you get a sense of perspective. Our failings are just that – failings – things we try, with considerable but uneven success, to overcome.

The idiocy on parade here is simply stunning.

Maybe democracy is not such a good idea for the culturally retarded part of the world. A benevolent despot might be what they need.

Mmm, Snippet, we’ve tried benevolent (or more-or-less benevolent) despotism in that part of the world for decades. We’ve bought into the argument of tinpots like Mubarak and Musharraf that it was them or chaos. We supported them and we’re getting chaos anyway, just as Churchill said that Chamberlain had a choice at Munich between war and dishonor; he chose dishonor and he would get war.
We might have had to prop up friendly despots during the Cold War, but now? Maybe, just maybe, if we’d let the peoples of these countries practice democracy some of the time, they might be ready by now to get it right.

greeneyshade,

Actually, I agree. I just get sick and tired of bouncing, chanting, burning, breaking, ululating mobs of idiots. I was venting.

Seriously, I really do think these people need democracy, even if the first thing they do is drive it over a cliff. At least there will be less confusion about whose fault the crash is. Small consolation, I suppose, but the alternative of supporting dictators who have been taking our money and telling us they are the only ones who know how to keep their people “under control” is fasting becoming unsupportable.

Probably the biggest problem “over there” is the perception that their problems are caused by something other than what they are doing day in and day out.

There’s a cure for that misperception. Is it worse than the disease? We’ll find out soon enough I think.

Yeah, they do have nukes. And lots of nuts in the ISI and lower levels of the military.

What fun! Just remember, these are the guys who set up Mullah Omar and the Taliban.

Let us hope that we know exactly where every nuke is, and have some way of destroying it in the case of an Islamist takeover. I’m sure India would have some reaction to an Islamist takeover also… it could be hairy.

And remember, the Islamists don’t need anywhere close to a majority to take over. After all, they aren’t shy about intimidation tactics such as wholesale murder of civilians.