On Iran's sovereignty and our hypocrisy:

I know it’s scary: long time enemy, Muslim theocracy, "crazy" people potentially will hold nukes. I hate to say it but it’s only fair. Now before you start freaking out, know that I’m basically a pacifist and I can’t think of many situations in which I’d consider the use of force to be just. Saving people from genocide or slavery maybe. I don’t want any country to hold or, God forbid, use nuclear weapons. But the U.S. can’t say “we can have weapons of mass destruction but you can’t” to a sovereign country, not even when its allies are on its side. Though we act as if it does, being big, strong and rich doesn’t rightly make us the arbiter of all things. The attitude that it does may be what makes some people hate us so much. Actions we take (while pretending to be the arbiters of all things) to keep them powerless make some of them desperate enough to do violence to us and our interests.

Further—and this is key—the U.S. cannot go around attacking and occupying sovereign nations, throwing its weight around with shock and awe, because it suspects they might have weapons that they might use to harm us. That is turning the already specious concept of "just war" on its head. We have to wait until they actually do something to us, (September 11th doesn’t count-- Iraq had no part in it and neither did Iran.) otherwise we become the bad guys.

Thanks to Bush, we don’t hold the moral high ground anymore. We’re not better in terms of human rights anymore-- not even overtly. We can’t claim to have better judgment, or to be sane compared to these crazy Iranians; we have a crazy and belligerent leader too.

What happened to the whole mutually assured destruction defense anyway? (I used to think that was crazy but now it seems pretty good to me.) Even if they build a bomb or a few, we’ve got thousands. Even those crazy Iranians wouldn’t be crazy enough to use theirs against us.

Seriously, is it possible that they are afraid of us? We act like we have no part in proliferation. That it's something some "evil" leaders of "rogue" states are up to. We invented proliferation. We're still the only ones to have dropped the bomb. Maybe we should consider dismantling our weapons so Iran and others don't feel they need to build their own.