Well, we once had hope they’d be a democracy, and perhaps they will be again, but the semi-deafening silence from most of the world says we don’t care very much.

Gorilla says: “Central Asia is not yet Asia Central!”

And they want to avoid a nuclear arms race in the region.

So, the ball’s back in Hillary’s court. There’s little support for sanctions, which haven’t had much impact on Iran. There’s even less support for a US or Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, assuming we even know where they all are.

What everyone other than Washington would get behind is a bilateral US-Iranian deal, followed by a wider regional agreement to limit nuclear proliferation.

The outlines are in place: a security guarantee and civilian nuclear power for Iran in exchange for IAEA inspections, no nuclear weapons and the resumption of US-Iranian diplomatic relations.

It’s difficult to understand what America’s national security goals are in the Middle East and Central Asia. Terrorism isn’t much more than a minor irritation. Oil is flowing and it’s in the interest of nearly all the bad actors to keep it flowing. Palestinian-Israeli peace is not achievable, but time and demographics will eventually force both sides to get serious.

Successive Administrations have gotten bogged down in fear and loathing. We won’t be staying in Afghanistan for decades, and that’s the only way the country will be peaceful. We can’t get into Pakistan as we would like, so we’ll have to keep trying to convince Islamabad to crack down on the nutters. Iraq may well return to civil war, but there’s not much we can do about it. We’re not serious about removing our dependence on fossil fuels, so we keep having to play policeman for the Seven Sisters in a very dangerous neighborhood.

Ten years have been wasted on a region that we would treat like Africa if the oil disappeared, and we haven’t learned a thing.

Gorilla thinks: “We’ll get grown ups when we start acting like grown ups!”

Now it’s little more than an airbase on the way to Afghanistan.

Do we care?

Not as long as the planes are flying.

Gorilla thinks: “Never let your rhetoric get in the way of the fierce urgency of air support”.