...though a peaceful attitude toward Iran is certainly a threat to our war profiteers.
Venezuelans have also voted themselves a "New Deal"--universal free medical care, universal free education through college, using resources to benefit the people who live there, putting transglobal monsters like Exxon Mobil in their place, helping small businesses, high employment, decent wages and benefits, cutting poverty in half and extreme poverty by over 70%, holding honest, transparent elections. These and other Chavez government policies are a dire threat to our corporate rulers and the greedbag rich, as well--the threat of a good example.
As for Iran, which is one of the milder Islamic regimes compared to, say, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen, and is a Persian not Arabic country (big difference--Persian culture is basically antithetical to, and still resentful of, Arab domination), the Iranians have all the reasoning on their side, as to U.S. aggression in the world and U.S. aggression against them. We should never forget that the U.S. deliberately destroyed Iran's democracy, in the 1950s, over nationalization of the oil by Iran's first president. THEN, the U.S. installed the horrible "Shah of Iran" for 25 years of torture and oppression. Recently, the U.S. slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people in Iran's next door neighbor, Iraq, for the same reason--oil. Smashed up the country in every way imaginable, including the cruel displacement of millions of people, installed a puppet government, got the oil contracts signed for western exploitation and finally departed, leaving behind a dysfunctional, violent, broken country where billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money for "aid" went missing. A dysfunctional, violent, broken country right on Iran's border.
What if, say, China, had done that to, say, Mexico? Wouldn't we--if we didn't have them--be seeking nuclear weapons as a deterrent to invasion?
Iran has never invaded anyone. The U.S. has--and with the worst of motives. So Iran has every reason to want a nuclear deterrent. I'm not a big fan of nuclear weapons. I hate them. But if ever there was a case for a nuclear deterrent, it is Iran's. The way to stop nuclear proliferation is NOT to threaten and bully countries and slaughter innocent people all over the landscape. The way to stop nuclear proliferation is to make peace AND to live sustainably, which includes curtailing monstrous transglobal corporations which seek resources and slave labor and are hijacking the U.S. military for those purposes.
I greatly admire Venezuela and the other Latin American countries including Brazil which have opened relations with Iran and who see trade and cultural relations as the path to peace not to mention the path to social progress. Threatening Iran or smashing it up with war is NOT going to further social progress in the Middle East. Look at Iraq! Social progress is a shibboleth anyway, as to U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. has no credibility on this matter. Not only are the Corporate Rulers and War Profiteers utterly destroying two centuries of U.S. social progress, here, out of greed, U.S. foreign policy has become one of the most regressive forces on earth, with for instance, trillions of dollars in U.S. " war on drugs," USAID/CIA and Pentagon money used to smash labor unions and murder human rights workers, teachers and peasant farmers in Colombia, to expand the Pentagon's "Southern Command" in Latin America for war across the "global south" (to Africa and Asia), to destroy democracy in Honduras and other countries, and to brutalize and militarize society and support fascist causes, as with the U.S. "war on drugs" in Mexico.
U.S. foreign policy is disgusting. It is also lawless. Talk about a bad example! Torturing prisoners! Running torture dungeons around the world! Indefinite detention without trial--now expanded to U.S. citizens! Drone bombings--execution without trial--and "collateral damage" (murdered innocents)--all over the globe, wherever some secret mole in a secret CIA office decides somebody ought to die!
Latin America is setting a good example of what foreign policy should be in democratic countries--peaceful, open to dialogue, non-exploitative, lawful, respectful of sovereignty and aimed at the betterment of the human race not endless war!
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