| | My thanks to Luke, Jeff, and Marty.
There's definitely more to explain -- including just in theory -- about how and why the UN coddles dictators, and what the horrific short- and long-term results have been. Initially, I think, the West sought to create a really fine and idealistic club, somewhat modeled upon itself, and then invited in select dictatorships in order to teach/influence them via contagion, but also shame them into better behavior. This possibly seemed plausible at the time, but all it did was encourage and reward their domestic and foreign political evil -- partially via Rand's deftly explained "sanction of the victim."
The point about only tyrannies causing war is all-important. Neo-con theorist Natan Sharansky likes to say that the dictatorship that loves you (e.g. Saudi Arabia) is far more dangerous than the democracy that hates you (e.g. France).
We do need to wage some real war here in our absurdist War on Islam, in my view, but as classicist and ARIan John Lewis recently emphasized in his New York lecture, what we mostly need to do is smash and crush their governments (verbs, mine ;-) ) -- not their general populations. Prof. Lewis claims Iran can be overthrown by air power and missiles alone, with a total loss of American life: zero. Inveterate trouble-maker that I am, I also asked Lewis about nuclear-armed Pakistan but unfortunately got no good answer other than, basically, make a real example of Iran. To top it off, I even asked about North Korea. But unfortunately no good answer. (His lecture focused almost entirely on Iraq and the analogy with WWII and Japan.)
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