“Don’t trust the intellectuals, liberals and secularists,” Mr. Erian said.

Sounds like these guys are right up your alley.

I worry that the unrest will be Islamified by the radicals and the region will be one big Iran. Those folks believe that their 12th Imam is alive. They believe he will spread Islam and Sharia across the globe. They are working toward that end, working hard frankly.

I worry for the people, especially the women of the region if this comes to pass. And what idiots we are if we are helping them.

Trey

Nobody can say with any certainty how this will play out. But if siding with the revolutionaries against the despots and dictators can make the Arabs see the U.S. in a better light, especially after the recent "crusades" by the Bush administration, it can only help our country.
As far as U.S. interests - the only real interest we have in the mid-east is the same as for the last 60 years. We must move away from imported oil. If I remember correctly, Jimmy Carter was the last president to actually try to do something about this over-riding problem. And look where that got him.

Drtrey3 wrote:

I worry that the unrest will be Islamified by the radicals and the region will be one big Iran. Those folks believe that their 12th Imam is alive. They believe he will spread Islam and Sharia across the globe. They are working toward that end, working hard frankly.

I worry for the people, especially the women of the region if this comes to pass. And what idiots we are if we are helping them.

Trey

I worry too, but the environment ripe for radicalization is a dictatorship.

You forget that we did more than anyone to make the Iranian revolution happen, and stick. First by assassinating their own democratically elected president in the 60's and re-installing the dictatorial but pro-Western Shah. Then when the revolution came down (which was not at all universally supported there), they rightly wanted the guy's head for years of hard-line repression and murder. Instead we give him a free pass to come get medical treatment and defacto asylum here. This rightly infuriated not the just the radicals, but the everyone else too.

So some students get pushed into taking over the embassy (free food was given out to anyone who would stay), hold the hostages for an absurd amount of time and finally it all ends in a stalemate. Isolation just made things worse, not better, but I guess when our national pride is at stake nothing is ever too stupid. Just look at Cuba! Now THAT policy has really worked out well, hasn't it?

But WAIT! That's not all. We figure we can get back at those guys with a proxy war by supporting none other than Saddam Hussein for a bloody and unending war between the two countries, again just setting ourselves up for more trouble. We engage China and gradually the start behaving a little better and actually are being pushed into some kind of accountability to their people. We isolate Iran and year after year we have strengthened the hand of a minority hardline regime.

The situation in Iran is a bit more complex than Dbowker has actually said, but he's on the money for many of the present issues, sadly.

The mess we've made in Iraq, first by proxy-supporting Saddamn, and then by destroying Iraq's capability to do anything whatsoever for the time being, has put the dictators in Iran in the drivers seat in the middle east. There is nothing and no one to control their absolute rule at this point, and nothing we might consider doing will make that any better.