Ming places Lib Dems decisively to the left of Labour

I think most people in this country would agree with Ming. A war with Iran would be folly on a grand scale.

David Lindsay

It certainly would be. Only about half of the Iranian population is ethnically Persian. Much of the oil is in the Arab South West. There are Kurds in the North West. Half of the Baluchis are in the East, the other half being across the border in Pakistan, where they have long-standing secessionist tendencies. There are so many Turkemen that Tehran is actually the second-largest Turkish-speaking city on earth, even though Turkish is a minority language there. There are more Azeris in Iran than in Azerbaijan. There is a sizeable and very ancient community of Jews, complete with its own reserved seat in Parliament. And so on. A multinational state such as the United Kingdom should be insisting on the preservation of Iran (which the looming war would undoubtedly destroy), as it should have insisted on the preservation of Iraq and Yugoslavia. And an America true to her own best ideals would take, and would have taken, the same view. But dream on! Instead, we are subject to those who consistently promoted, or continue to promote, the Wahabbi interest in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, putatively Syria, and on, and on, and on... Of course, they want for themselves the privileged dhimmitude of Moorish Spain, which is why they cannot admit that liberal democracy can only arise out of, and can only be preserved in and by, a culture formed definitively by the Christianity that they define themselves by rejecting. An attack on Iran would make the Iraq War look like the Teddybears' Picnic, exploding the Shi'ite Arab arc from South-Western Iran through Southern Iraq and round the Gulf (including most of the oil-producing part of Saudi Arabia), exploding Kurdistan across at least three countries including Turkey (a member of NATO, of course), exploding the Turkish-speaking parts of Turkey as well, exploding Azerbaijan and thus the Caucuses, exploding Baluchistan (and thus nuclear-armed, Deobandi-ridden Pakistan), and (again) on, and on, and on... It is almost impossible to state in words the urgency of preventing this from happening. But some excuse still has to be found to destroy Iran's large and multi-ethnic emerging democracy outside the global hegemony (as in Yugosolavia) and to steal her oil (as in Iraq). The current, wholly contrived, situation is that excuse, brought to us by the very people who told us that Iraq had magic nuclear weapons capable of being deployed within 45 minutes, capable of reaching New York from Mesopotamia, and one hundred per cent undetectable. Oh, and before anyone suggests that I have contradicted myself by calling Iran an emerging democracy while saying that liberal democracy depends on Christianity, these are early days. Japan, to cite the obvious example, will no doubt remain a democracy for many, many years yet. And Iran is starting several decades later than Japan did. But sooner or later, liberal democracy can only survive by reference to its roots in the Biblical-Classical synthesis that is Christianity. Not, please note, in Max Shachtman or Leo Strauss.