[Captain Walker]

Secondly, we lacked the nerve to do it. And I retrospect, after much thought, I am at peace with that. We simply didn't have the national resolve to move on Iran, even if citizens like you and I would have favored it, even with loss of life.

Most importantly, we lacked the moral high ground.

In American history books, there was no Iran before 1979. It has to be this way, because 26 years prior to 1979, the CIA stuck its beak in that country's business and helped in the overthrow of its elected leader. That person who got tossed out in 1979 simply had no moral right to be there; he only had the approval of the UK and the Greatest Country in the World.

So time began in 1979, which makes it easy to refer to all of the world's problems as having begun at that time in history. Most importantly, it helps the Greatest Country in the World pretend that its hands are clean when dealing with Iran.

[rlmorel]

We had an embassy. They invaded the embassy and took it over. They took hostages and kept them hostage for 444 days.

They murdered 241 American citizens in the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983. (Only an infantile, ignorant fool would say "Oh, that was Hezbollah, not Iran." Hezbollah WAS and IS Iran. And so is Hamas.)

They directly killed thousand of our servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They made their choice in 1979 to break international laws and norms, so the "We lacked the moral high ground" argument is null and void. The "oh, our hands are not clean" argument goes for every single nation that has ever existed on the face of the Earth.

American hands aren't clean. The Israeli hands aren't clean. The British hands aren't clean. Saudi Arabia's hands aren't clean. Germany's hands aren't clean. Italy's hands aren't clean. The American Indian's hands aren't clean. The Mexican hands aren't clean.

Nobody's hands are clean, and most significantly, Islam's hands are filthily not clean no matter happened at some date or what time a cherry picked point on the calendar. Picking and choosing where you want to deploy that counter-argument makes zero impact on me.

And when Iran attacked our embassy and took American diplomats hostages, they surrendered any right to any pretense of sovereignty under international law.

They made their own choices, not only murdering thousands of Americans, but tens or hundreds of thousands of people all over the world through their proxies (which in Iran's case, means IRAN) in places ranging from Lebanon to Spain and beyond.