From our perspective common people aren't responsible. But from the perspective of the person who wrote the "your decision to arm Russia" on their website it is.
So what is interesting is that this person is fully able to assign blame to individual Iranians for their government's actions but, one would imagine, is able to separate themselves from the actions of the US government.
I wrote "one would imagine" because there was no reply so we cannot say for sure. But my experience with Americans who do this "all Iranians/North Koreans/Syrians/Iraqis etc are bad!" thing is that they carve out little exceptions for themselves and the USA so that their reasons to hate others never seem to apply to themselves.
There's a certain irony in holding North Koreans or Chinese responsible for their governments' actions, but denying any responsibility for your own democratically-elected government's.
I think you'd do well to re-read my comments because that's not what I'm saying at all. I suspect you're more upset because I've touched a nerve. Because this is something that many Americans (and fellow Brits, I might add) are guilty of, and cannot really provide a proper justification for other than "but we're the good guys". They will often try to derail the discussion or argue to avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth
The common people are responsible for the actions of their government in a democracy, are they not? The issue is that Iran isn't a democracy, it's a theocratic dictatorship — the people are explicitly not able to be responsible for the actions of their government.
To be honest the argument works even if Iran was a democracy. Both governments doing evil stuff but only the citizens of one of those countries is absolved of blame. That alone should cause someone reasonable to pause and ask themselves if they're not being a bit ridiculous.
The fact that Iran is pretty authoritarian and undemocratic just makes the position even more absurd and drives the point home further.
i dont think thats really accurate. its theocratic and authoritarian, but its not a dictatorship and they have democratic elements
the candidates are approved by a religious board, but its got a full set of checks and balances and allows for liberalization. The reality is that given a panel of candidates Iranians have often voted for the conservative candidate
i get there is a large amount of liberally minded people in big cities that feel disenfranchised.. but i wouldnt be surprised if the government is still highly popular with the majority of people
Comparing it to North Korea or China is way to simplistic
This is why the democracy-vs-dictatorship point is not one I think is worth arguing. Because while you can technically vote for president, senate, congress who have some say over that on your behalf, you still don't really decide anything.
I think however you'd both be in agreement about the broad thrust of the argument - that this is a slightly daft thing to lay at the feet of your average Iranian, who will already be perfectly aware of what its government gets up to.
>Because while you can technically vote for president, senate, congress who have some say over that on your behalf, you still don't really decide anything.
Even if there was a referendum in the US on whether to drone strike alleged drug traffickers or whatever, it's still a stretch to blame all Americans (with "your" language), because it's there's still a good chance that a given American visitor didn't actually vote for it.
The US is closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Certainly now.
In properly democratic countries you would have more than 2 parties, with more than 2 viewpoints. You pick one that aligns with you, and they actually have a chance at winning.
