>>I'm surprised you would say that Kevin. Do you think the American backed Shah of Iran was completely blameless on all events that led up to '79? If not then the moral justification would be gone.
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>>I'm not defending the Shah. There were decades of hostility there.
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>>But allowing the Shah to come to the U.S. for medical treatment does not justify the resulting paranoia and the students holding our innocent diplomats and citizens for 444 days. We have a right to protect our citizens and would have been justified in any response. And now we have government-sanctioned anti-Semitism from Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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>>Kevin
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>The Shah's visit to the US did not cause the subsequent events and you would not be justified in "any" response. You over-simplify the events, both in Iran and the world, that lead us to the Iranian government that we see today.


On the money. Even then, Islamic fundamentalism was a rising force. It puzzles me when President Bush and others in his administration describe it as something we need to "stop" or "defeat." It is not within our power to do so. In fact you could make a case that our actions have only served to advance the cause. There will be more Islamic states in the Middle East before there are fewer. Iraq seems clearly headed in that direction. And the leaders of the Saudi royal family probably haven't slept in 10 years, waiting for their revolution to start.