There is, tragically, a clear and obvious lesson in the events of the recent past, in fact in the events up to five minutes ago.
That lesson...freedom loving peoples around the world can no longer hopefully rely on the United States of America for assistance, either material or moral.
In fact, the truth is that the “friends” of the USA will be thrown under the bus in an instant, while those who proudly proclaim their loathing and distaste for America will be “non-meddled with”.
No matter the cruelty or barbarity of your regime, within your own borders, you are secure in power.
It is not only we who are screwed, it is the people of the world.
At the beginning of Iraq war (I mean 2003 campaign of the war that started in 1991), I argued with those who said “how dare US to invade a sovereign country” that sovereignty rests with the individual people. When people freely delegate their sovereignty to their consensual government, than the state has it. Otherwise it’s all smoke and screen making the life of tyrants easier. A modern state has instruments of power and control that tyrants of the past could only dream of. Its getting more and more difficult to overthrow an oppressive state without any help from outside.
The only thing that needs to concern us is practicality. What CAN we do. We can’t do much with China, for obvious reasons, but on smaller scale - spreading democracy makes our future safer. Democracies don’t make wars with each other.
There used to be a barrage of radio over the European part of Soviet Union in Russian language telling people the truth. Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, BBC Russian Services, Radio Liberty, German Wave, Kol Israel. Communists tried to block them with noise, but radio frequencies were constantly shifting, so it was impossible. The West was not squeamish with this propaganda, or call it counter-propaganda, does not matter.
What do we do now for Iran and Middle East? Next to nothing, letting the Al Jazeera and state propaganda to dominate. And this is in time when Internet and satellite TV make information easier to distribute than before, as twitter service became an instrument of the revolution in the last month. Why not dump cheap satellite receivers on the region? Whatever we’d do in the info war is cheaper than a weak of a hot war for sure.