[Porsche-O-Phile]

I'm not giving the Iranians a pass here (they are a nation led by nutty, fanatical theocratic wackjobs who want to impose their belief system and way of life on the ROW - nobody's disputing that), but consider this:

Why is it that every single time a foreign nation tries to develop a technology that will elevate it out of the third world, we (America and the west) feel threatened by it. Whether it's nuclear power, better aircraft, better submarines, longer range rockets, 128-bit encryption, a stronger economy, whatever. We are always the first to condemn it, claiming it "might be used for military purposes".

Well I've got news for you, ANY technology can potentially be used for military applications. Yes, some are more suited to it than others, but you can't "un-ring" a bell once it's rung any more than you can control who uses technology and for what purposes once it's out.

Maybe if we hadn't screwed up foreign policy and become so ham-fisted at it, we wouldn't have to worry about everyone else in the world hating us and wanting to attack us. You know, the old thing about not needing to worry about a big, mean dog or tough kid at school if you don't give them a reason to attack you? This little bit of common sense that any 8-year-old kid knows has evidently been lost on our "leaders" because their hubris overpowers it into thinking that any/every resource on the world is ours and we can do whatever we damn well please to go steal it - or that we're always going to be bigger and stronger than the "mean dog" or "bully". Very presumptuous logic. No wonder we're hated.

It's also worth pointing out that many of the technologies we enjoy (as a first world country) were directly created for our own military use. The Internet, jet engines, nuclear energy, etc. They were all developed first with military uses in mind. Yet we conveniently didn't listen to the ROW when THEY undoubtedly b!tched about it, did we? Yet somehow it's different when they do it.

Don't get me wrong here - Iran in particular is a nation that probably SHOULD be kept in the third world. They have shown themselves to be reckless imperialists sworn to destroy the way of life of a great number of the world's people, and to not respect national sovereignty, governed by blind and mindless religious fervor.

All I'm saying is it would be VERY easy for someone else in another part of the world to re-write that above sentence to read, "America in particular is a nation that probably should be returned to the third world. They have shown themselves to be reckless imperialists sworn to destroy the way of life of a great number of the world's people, and to not respect national sovereignty, increasingly governed by blind and mindless religious fervor".

Just something to consider.

It's all relative, and perhaps we should start looking in the mirror once in a while. . .