They're Gonna Kill that Poor Woman

As America goes mad with grief and pity over the supposedly intolerable death of an Iranian woman in the chaos of the ongoing political protests, it is worth noting that our flying death robots are killing scores of people--guilty, innocent, dangerous, friendly, who knows? who cares!--all the time. Recalling this is, I believe, a necessary antidote to the temptation to view the Iranian uprising with a false optimism that sees our countries drawing nearer together, if only the revolution succeeds. Leaving aside the dubious victory claims of the Iranian opposition, the turth is that Iran, even as a pseudo-military theocratic autocracy, has never been an aggressor nation like the United States and its Western Allies, has indeed fought only one major conflict, the Iran-Iraq war, which was begun when Iraq invaded without warning, hoping to take advantage of the disarray of the Islamic Revolution, backed by, among others, these United States.