Goodbye Mossadegh (Iran) 1953, Arbenz (Guatemala) 1954 and Allende (Chile) 1973.
If fighting a war would help make some of our citizens really wealthy, then Sam made the war happen, even if the war made no real sense.
Viet Nam, Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan
The United States has also kept tabs on the nuclear club, ultimately deciding who is allowed to join and who is not.
This brings us to Iran, who was told they did not qualify.
Recently, President Obama has told Iran in forceful language that they must not get nuclear weapons. His national security advisor, General James Jones (ret.), said on Sunday that Iran getting the bomb would be worse than the United States dropping bombs upon them.
Why should we believe that?
If we could see this issue through the point of view of the people of Iran and their leaders, we would recognize that the matter of who has the right to nuclear weapons rests upon survival of the very nations we have historically talked down to. There is no other reason they would need them.
Iran's president has allegedly said that he wants to blow up Israel. While the translation of his actual comment is in dispute, he has no interest in committing this act. Any bombs dropped upon Israel would be followed by enough firepower from the United States to take Iran off the map. What kind of leader has no followers?
Iran undoubtedly noticed that the United States dropped bombs on its neighbor Iraq, which had no weapons of mass destruction and presented no threat to them. What better way to deter the U.S. from attacking than to have available ways to retaliate? In fact, the United States has never attacked a nation which it knew to have nuclear weapons.
Some fear that Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists, who in turn could attack the United States with them. But if this scenario were to play out, the United States could track the terrorists back to Iran. Iran has no interest in this outcome as it parallels the potential problem mentioned earlier with Israel.
Nations are incapable of carrying out their ideals and feeding their people if they fail the test of survival. Iran would be foolish to betray the highest level of the Maslow hierarchy of needs because it wanted to make some point with nuclear weapons.
Ironically, the United States has lost its ability to impose itself on the rest of the world because of the presence of the nuclear club that it started. Our past actions gave the green light for smaller nations to threaten our dominance.
