Oh, and they've also been repeating their desire to wipe Israel off the map.
How many times do they have to threaten this stuff, and rub their progress in our face, for us to take it seriously?
Any thoughts on this, guys? And what are our options?
This is deadly serious. The backward-looking, "Well if only Bush hadn't done ____ then we could do X, Y, and Z stuff is child's play and no longer useful at this juncture.
This also partly answers Pjabowd's question as to why we support Israel even if they're unfair to the Palestinians.
If a military strike is going to be made against Iran, Israel is both the most likely aggressor and the most likely target of any counterattack. We rely on them to keep the region in check while we chip away at their culture from the margins by exporting everything from rap music to carefree sexual attitudes.
If we were going to invade Iran, it'd likely be a much longer, harder slog than Iraq.
Would it be worth bringing back the draft for such a conflict?
That a country so similar to America in many respects could treat violent crime so casually and intolerant speech (in an ostensibly free society) so seriously just baffles the mind.
I've long thought that tougher sentences for violent offenders can and should be a part of a winning Democratic agenda. It'd also provide the political capital for scaling back parts of our failed drug war; why should peaceful hippies smoking pot be wasting our space in jail when there are violent criminals we need to deal with? Ticket the casual marijuana users, put them on probation, and move on.
On that note, we need to approach urban gangs in the same way we do organized crime - while some gang members can be rehabilitated over time, there's much more to be said for the law-and-order approach.
The lax sentences for violent criminal behavior in Europe are a travesty.
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