“As for Iran we can bomb them or we can sanction them.”

Not we - we can for instance criticize, and publicize others who do, and give them our support (moral, verbal, etc) - which is all they want: they want solidarity from feminists and human rights advocates and the like, they don’t want anything from the US gummint. ‘We’ doesn’t have to mean The Feds.

I must say I think that’s a repellent comment.

I borrowed it from Thomas Jefferson.

As for Iran we can bomb them or we can sanction them. Instant death or slow starvation. It’s a hell of a choice. Which would you prefer?

The other choice is to let Iranians govern Iranians.

Feel free to criticize. By all means. There are aspects of our own government that need to be criticized. But we need to lose the philosophy of “Team America: World Police”

I don’t think that’s true, actually; I think one can post about it and spill a minimal amount of ink disavowing any pro-bombing intentions. And the fact is that many dissidents and dissident groups inside Iran and inside other repressive regimes want and welcome moral support from the outside; not only that, but they regret and even resent the silence of what ought to be their allies - of feminists, the left, supporters of human rights. It’s a depressing and destructive idea, this notion that criticism of oppression must be linked with ‘let’s bomb’ campaigns. Apart from anything else that kind of hands concern with human rights and women’s rights over to the Bush admin, and who the hell wants to do that?!

“It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Nor does genocide or famine or generalized torture in some far corner of the globe; is that actually a reason to ignore it? Is that generalizable advice to ignore everything that harms neither our own finances nor our own bodies? And not only to ignore it but to argue that others should ignore it too?

I must say I think that’s a repellent comment.

And if the Iranian Supreme Court suits the Iranians then that is their little red wagon to pull.

It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.