Why We Shouldn't Bomb Iran

There are many reasons why Iran's nuclear intentions should be stopped: they're a theocracy that has a proven history of using large weapons against civilian targets (the Iran-Iraq war), the use of civilians and children as cannon fodder (ibid) and a government overlain by a theocracy that is far less in touch with reality than the West would like.

It also has a vibrant, moderate intellectual class, a democracy that while practically corrupt has an underlying acceptance (note the demonstrations after the latest elections) and a history, if not in recent times, of Western confluence.

To use military force against Iran, at a time when the forces of moderation and democratic and popular change are waxing, would undermine the surge for democracy that the United States would very much like to see in the old Persian kingdom. War unites and war provides, as we've seen here since 9/11, a pretext for government abolition or infringement of civil liberties.

If we're going to go blow something up, I vote for North Korea. Their populace certainly isn't going to rise up and declare democracy, and they never had the concept in their country. And they are, without doubt, far more needing of military intervention than the stormy, but vibrant, Iranian people.