[Preechr]

That's one way of looking at it.

What constituted Iran's "Fair Share?" If moon people informed you your house was situated on tremendous deposits of resplendium, a fabulous natural resource you'd never heard of, and set up a mining operation in your basement to get to it in exchange for a percentage of the profits, would you have the right to steal the minig equipment and kick out the moon folk that got the ball rolling to begin with?

I know there's more to it than this simple analogy, but I'd like to see you explain the fundamentals of the history before you start in on splitting the hairs of the discussion.

The Ottoman Empire was defeated, and it's territory divided by the Europeans that kicked it's ass. The partition plan was retarded and self-serving for the powers that drew it up, and that set the stage for the wars that have been raging ever since. The partitions were designed to give the West control over the Middle East, and that plan has obviously failed to a large degree.

The conflicts in the Middle East have, for the last century, revolved around supplying oil to the West. If the War on Terror has anything to do with oil, it is headed east. Within ten years, the emerging industrial economy in China and South Asia will be requiring oil in proportion to our oil needs of the 1920's... our own industrial revolution. If the Middle East situation is not stabilized soon, China will have no choice but to go take the oil it needs. How is the status quo of the past 30 years helping this emerging problem?

The Shah was friendly to the West because we supported his regime. The Shah did not see the need to gain support from within his own borders, preferring instead to serve as a merchant rather than a leader. We have made worse mistakes than allowing that to continue. We never bothered to understand Arab culture, and until we made that commitment, the efforts of the West to co-exist with the Middle East were fraught with failures.

What does that mean, then? Should we stop trying? The Bush Administration is NOT in the exact process of what happened 50 years ago. The Bush Administration is at least attempting to learn from history and accomplish what the West has been trying to get for 100 years: Peace. That will only happen when built upon a foundation of Freedom. We are no longer interested in installing supplicant merchants like the Shah or gangsters like Bashir Gemayel just to satisfy our immediate goals.

The War on Terror marks a paradigm shift for the West. If you are going to study the history of what's happened so far, do us all a favor and do so in order to learn the lessons of our past mistakes and apply them, not just hold them up as a reason not to proceed. If we don't find a way to spread peace effectively, we only allow further war.