A Complaint from Iran

Steven Den Beste has been doing some cold, Jacksonian calculating about what it would take for the US to go nuclear in this war, and what the consequences may be. A guy (?) from Tehran later wrote Den Beste that it all seems to much like an American "final solution." I understand the concern, or horror, even, but I believe Den Beste's response is correct (as I frequently do). Anyway there was something about the letter that caught my eye. Here are a few lines:

How many people are you willing to see killed and still view yourself as a force for Good? How much torture are you going to tolerate in the interest of some anticipated favorable future outcome?

The first question concerns American action. The point is that people are being killed now in the war, and many more may die later. How many is too much for us?

The second question concerns American inaction. How much torture and killing from third parties is too much for us, presumably before we do something about it?

Here we have the two of the main complaints against the US: damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

I'd like to know from such people what exactly they'd like the US to do about the average horrible dictatorship. Taking them out with our military, or supporting militant rebels seems to be off the table because that would require killing, and imperialism, and US hegemony and all those bad things. Leaving them be also seems to be off the table because that requires some level of support, tacit or active, for rights violations, torture, and murder and all of those bad things.

Previously, during the cold war, we decided between those two options based on the left/right leanings of the dictatorship. But that's no longer a meaningful measure.

About the US level of support for dictatorships, I don't think that there is a place on the spectrum between total economic sanction and military containment on one hand (think pre-war Iraq), and total economic engagement and military support on the other (think Egypt) that would satisfy everyone. Regarding a dictatorship somewhere in the middle, like Zimbabwe, the calls for us to turn up the heat seem to dominate. There won't be a position on this spectrum that everyone will agree upon for a particular dictatorship. Rather we can only balance between those demanding that we be more harsh and those demanding more engagement.

Peaceful engagement would seem a good way of resolving these issues. It involves diplomatic pressure, economic incentives, cultural exchanges and the like. But this takes decades if it works at all, and there's an awful lot of torture and killing going on in the meantime. Look at China, and the complaints about our relationship with it.

Which horrible dictatorship has the US handled best? If someone complaining about the US doing too little or too much could answer that question, maybe we could adapt our policies to other countries using the same principles.

While of course US foreign policy could stand some improvement, I think the central issue here is America's hyperpower status. In places where the political and economic situations are far from good, it's easy to see US sins, whether sins of commision or sins of ommission, as being the primary cause of that misery. That's why I don't expect any serious answers to any of these questions. If the US had the perfect attitude towards such dictatorships, then no one could complain about it. Perfection not being available on this planet, there will always be some US failure to point to.