Nony writes:
the leaders in Iran don't look any crazier to me than the Soviet leadership did back in the day.
In fact, Iran looks a heckuva lot less crazy in a lot of ways. Their society seems to be a bit more open, for one thing, and their citizens seem to know what's going on in the world. The citizens there are also fairly well off, unlike the average Soviet citizen, and therefore have much more to lose. Soviet society was much more geared towards militarization than Iranian society seems to be - heck, the Iranians still allow their students and university professors to somewhat openly criticize their government policies - something that would have been unheard of from anyone living in the USSR.
All true. The common rejoinder here is that the leadership of Iran are a bunch of eschatological nutters who can't be trusted to employ such things as "rationality," or "sense." This flies in the face of recent Iranian actions, most of which have been rational, none of which have involved triggering a nuclear, or even conventional, counterattack from stronger nations, but whatever.
Remember here that the Soviet Union wasn't just a mean country. It was the epicenter of an expansionistic ideology that believed its historical triumph to be pre-assured. It was as religious as any religion. And it actually had a basis for this belief, as communism was a superficially attractive ideology that was attracting adherents in major countries -- the US included. And yet we not only dealt with the Soviets, but spoke to their leaders and welcomed them on our soil. Because we were the superpower, and we believed in our country.
