Zbignew Brzezinski was his National Security advisor and he admitted encouraging the Islamists against the Socialists in Afghanistan as a way to draw the Soviets in. Boy, did that pay off or what?

But Brzezinski is as much at fault for "losing Iran" as Carter was.

And Iran was not for the US to "lose". What were thry going to do? Send in the Marines to protect the Shah they had installed 20 years earlier?

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan