There used to be a rough consensus on the Left along the line of your argument, but that consensus has broken down in the age of humanitarian imperialism, especially through the discourse of human rights, but also now apparently on such questions as energy policy. To compound the problem of the absence of consensus on sovereignty, many views exist on the Left regarding nuclear power in general: some think that nuclear power never or seldom makes economic sense; others think that it sometimes makes sense in some countries, but not in Iran (which probably is the dominant view in the global North); others think that it sometimes makes sense in some countries, including Iran; and others think that it makes sense in any country. I fear that, just as we lost in the case of Iraq, we'll lose in the case of Iran. Our enemy has a coherent argument, but we don't -- we don't agree on politics, or economics, or science. :-0
<http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/09/cacophony-on-left.html> Saturday, September 29, 2007 Cacophony on the Left
The US power elite are united on the points that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, is out to destroy Israel, supports "terrorist organizations" abroad, and is killing US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that therefore it must be stopped. They repeat these points over and over and over again, and they are beginning to stick. No one in the audience, presumably educated people, laughed when Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, a liberal man, hammered on them as if they were well established facts.
Leftists, in contrast, have no such unity.
How many opinions exist on the Left regarding Iran's nuclear program alone?
* "[C]ountries like Iran should possess nuclear arms
to constrain the global hegemony of the United
States." -- Slavoj Zizek
* "[U]nambiguously oppose any nuclear energy
development in Iran." -- Reza Fiyouzat
Between these two extremes are more nuanced voices like these:
* Iran's nuclear energy program makes economic
sense, and "[a]s long as the IAEA has not found Iran
in violation of its international obligations towards
nuclear weapons, the global community must not
give in to unreasonable pressure by those nations
that use international treaties as tools to advance
their and their allies' agenda." -- Muhammad Sahimi
* "We believe that the way out of the current crisis
passes through transparency of all the decisions
made and actions taken towards achieving nuclear
technology, winning the trust of the International
Atomic Energy Agency with respect to the extent
and goals of advanced industries in Iran, avoiding
any provocative statements and actions towards
the countries of the region, and planning the foreign
policy of the country based on the acceptable and
established principles of international policy." -- Tudeh
* "Countries don't get nuclear weapons to use them.
They get them to strengthen their bargaining power,
and to protect themselves from others. . . . Nuclear
weapons are better relegated to the scrapheap of
history, to be sure. The world would be a better place
without them. There is no guarantee that they will
not be launched, perhaps accidentally. But the
potential that Iran will build them, and after that the
possibility that it might use them, provide no reason
to go to war against Iran." -- John B. Quigley
And so on, and so forth. The public would be hard-pressed to figure out what exactly those in opposition to Washington want. Contradictory voices do not add up to a powerful coherent discourse that can effectively counter the US power elite's propaganda. -- Yoshie