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Comment by EpicEng | Hacker News Reader

So what's your suggestion? Country X won't play nice, what do you do? given your moral stance on sanctions I can't imagine you would propose war. So what are the options? What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors?

The world isn't some idyllic place where there's always a solution to every problem which harms no one. Yes, the citizenry often gets caught up in this sort of thing, but again, what are the alternatives? Let them do as they please and hope everything works out?

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You act like the US is just an innocent judge forced to punish those naughty countries. We have now spent forty years economically attacking Iran, paid people tons of money to kill Iranians, invaded and destroyed a neighboring country, and spent the entire time threatening Iran with nuclear/non-nuclear destruction. Yet they are considered the "bad actor."

These sanctions are not unilateral actions by the US, so no, I don't "act that way". These sanctions we're passed by the UN, of which China is a permanent member.

You were very clearly talking about sanctions in general being an acceptable way of punishing "bad actors," even asking what tools "we" should use. This reply doesn't make sense.

That's fair; I lost context hopping around in comments. You specifically spoke of Iran however. We've made a ton of mistakes in the region. What we haven't done is publically called for the death of everyone in their country, raised children to learn nothing but the Koran and hate for infidels, fund organizations who kill innocent civilians indiscriminantly, killed off thousands of dissenters, or murdered people for cursing Jesus or drinking alcohol or being a homosexual. If you think the US and Iran stand on the same moral ground then you're simply not a reasonable person.

Though I have some issues with your list, none of this gives the US the moral authority to use sanctions on Iran, an act that has led to the hardship and death of Iranian civilians. More so given all these acts are taking place after decades of sanctions.

A few particulars though.

>What we haven't done is publically called for the death of everyone in their country,

How you can view this as worse than the range of US actions that have killed thousands of Iranians confuses me.

>fund organizations who kill innocent civilians indiscriminantly

We funded the Iraq army that killed over a hundred thousand civilians.

>, killed off thousands of dissenters,

SAVAK

>If you think the US and Iran stand on the same moral ground then you're simply not a reasonable person.

This is just a small list of the horrors the US has done to Iran, ignoring what it does elsewhere. I'm not a supporter of the Iranian government, they've done some truly terrible things to their civilians. The US has done far worse to other nation's civilians, the comparison isn't even close.

Given the ineffectiveness of sanctions, why is doing nothing not an option? Doing something just for the sake of doing it is bad foreign policy and weakens soft power. Even as it benefits people who propose the action so as to appear to be doing something.

>So what's your suggestion? Country X won't play nice, what do you do?

Nothing!

>What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors?

Give up yours, or stop telling others what to do about theirs. The US is not a good actor either.

> What tools do we have available to us to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and persuade bad actors?

Why would a country sitting on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world consider nuclear proliferation a bad thing?

After all, I am frequently told that MAD prevents wars, no?

Mostly because we haven't been running around talking about wiping other nations off of the map. Obviously we have our own issues, but you can't honestly be proposing a moral equivalence between the US and Iran.

The US has actively caused many nations to be wiped off the map, including attempting to remove Yemen right now.

I'm not arguing I'm favor of covert attempts to iverthrow foreign governments, but wanting to replace a regime and wanting to murder all _citizens_ is not even remotely the same thing.

No, we have instead started a good dozen coups, and a dozen offensive wars (with varying levels of justification).

I am pretty sure that if the targets of those wars had WMDs, those wars wouldn't have taken place.

Incidentally, how many times has Israel been invaded since it illegally acquired WMDs?

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