Stating the obvious. Or not.

Somehow I missed reading The Sunday New York Times yesterday, but apparently I didn't miss much, especially on the editorial page. It was largely devoted to hand-wringing over Iran going nuclear, and, as Elizabeth points out, the Times omits the back story. Namely, that a) the United States overthrew the democratically elected President Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 and installed an autocrat in his place, who ruled fairly brutally with the help of the CIA and SAVAK for the next couple of decades before being deposed by some understandably pissed off and anti-American Iranians. And b) there is already a nuclear power in the Middle East. It’s called Israel and it acquired those weapons with the active assistance and blessing of the United States government. So if the region is unstable and going nuclear, well, American foreign policy played a pretty major role in bringing that about. Which is one reason why most of us global villagers outside America tend to roll our eyes when U.S. politicians and pundits talk about promoting democracy and prohibiting nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Not much of a track record.