Ron, I'm sorry if the tone of my response was offensive--I meant my invective to be directed to the writer of the article. There aren't many of us left-over 1960's liberals posting on SI and I probably do get defensive on occasion. Plus I'm employed to teach analytical reading skills, looking for the unstated assumptions, the covert agendas, and the like. So, Charles, while I agree that the posted work is too subtle to be called a diatribe, I take exception to its continual representation of an American foreign policy (and we're expected to infer who is responsible for that) that seems to be designed by people who have so little competence that they can be jerked around by the Iranians like puppets on a string. That's NOT a flattering image. Note that the metaphor is carefully repeated, so that we don't miss its importance, and it's not modified by any off-setting views. It's also never examined closely, but it serves as an assumption on which the argument is based regarding the rising dangers in the Middle East--that is, the assumed "loss of control" by the American government helps justify the representation of a politics of chaos dangerously close to boiling over.
Of course, the idea that the American government _should_ "control events" in the Persian Gulf is another unstated assumption. The attitude that American control is the normal state of affairs suggests how extensively imperialist views pervade the piece. Personally, I find these views arrogant, as I'm sure came through more explicitly than needed in MY "diatribe."
I'll try to maintain more the academic's usual cool, ironic detachment in the future.
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