Declaration of Independence as editorial

That's what Stamford Advocate did today. They published the full text on their Editorial page. I really appreciate the gesture. How much more pathetic, in comparison, was a tiny piece on Iran jammed into the leftover space! The paper basically says that destroying Iran's nuclear program may be the right thing, but we're afraid of what Iran will do in return. The idea that Iran should be afraid of what we do in return does not even surface.

This is something that Cold War and United Nations did to international relations. Between 1948 and 1989, a conventional war where US attacked a nasty dictator and took over his country was simply unthinkable. It could easily trigger a nuclear exchange with Soviet Union. This got institutionalized in UN framework. A weak and nasty countries lost the fear of strong and righteous ones under Soviet nuclear umbrella. Now that Soviet Union is gone, decent countries could get to punishing the nasty ones again. Being a dictator and running your country into the ground could have some consequences again. The very first experiment, in Serbia, was succesful. Iraq proved to be so costly and mismanaged that we'll likely lose any appetite to do this. But Iraq is a special case. In Iran, we could deploy different tactics, similar to ones used in Serbia. Iranians, unlike Iraqi, may actually kick out the government that got them into a war with US. Or am I being too optimistic? In any case, running a disastrous government should have consequences, and US is in the position to actually provide them.