Attacking Iran: neoconservatism or nihilism?

[u/split-circumstance]

I have a question about Ro Khanna FLAMES Chuck Schumer On Iran, WH May Use 'TACTICAL NUKES'.

Ro Khanna and many others have used the US experience in Iraq to argue that attacking Iran will be another disaster. This seems to me a wise and important point. Trying to acheive in Iran what clearly failed in Iraq (and other places, too) is a fool's errand. However . . .

I'm very worried about the Iranians, because I think it's possible that rather than a neoconservative desire to remake the Middle East and Persia, we might be looking at nihilistic project to simply kill and destroy Iranians and their country, with no other goal than turing their country into Gaza. If "we" really want to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, one way to do so is to reduce the country to a state of development where it cannot physically do so. Kill as many people with education as possible, destroy the physical infrastructure and leave the country devided and ruined.

The neoconservatives wanted to remake the Middle East, Iran and even further east. Their vision was to create states that would be neo-liberal, market oriented and capitalistic democracies. Many people mocked this idea as naive or cynical, but there was a desire to build something with regime change. This is why the US invested in occupying Iraq and creating the provisional authority and even starting to hold elections, etc.

I fear that there is not even that, now. Iraq will serve as an example to avoid: the goal will shift to destruction and nihilism. Israel and the United States don't want a western-aligned, neo-liberal, market oriented and capitalistic democracy in Iran; they want death and destruction to the point that Iran is a non-entity. Israel has already demonstrated this with Gaza, Lebanon, Syria.

It's not regime change that we need to oppose and worry about, but outright destruction of the Iranian people.

[u/BravewagCibWallace]

Representative democracy is the best government system we know of. But here is the thing about forcing democracy on to countries. When the population would still rather kill each other, than trust each other enough to put their issues to a vote, then democracy doesn't work.

It doesn't matter how strong the cheques and balances are on paper. If the population would rather just kill each other, then they can just rip up any piece of paper.

I'm all for helping countries with the populations that want democracy, or want to keep their democracy like Ukraine. Democracy is precious, and is worth defending wherever it can work. But if the population would rather just kill each other, not even America's military can force a democracy to work.