American liberals make fun of Friedman on Iraq and Afghanistan, why not Iran?
They don't pay attention to Egypt either.

On the same topic, Adam Shatz in the LRB. Mubarak’s Last Breath

There is also a brisk traffic in arms: US manufacturers recently announced the sale to Cairo of 24 new F-16 fighter jets and other equipment, worth an estimated $3.2 billion. Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations has published a ‘contingency planning memorandum’ in favour of continued support to the regime, which, as he describes it, ‘has helped create a regional order that makes it relatively inexpensive for the United States to exercise its power’. Less expensive at any rate than it would be in the event of an Islamist takeover that ‘would pose a far greater threat – in magnitude and degree – to US interests than the Iranian revolution’. This seems to be the Obama administration’s implicit wager, too. It’s bad news for ElBaradei and his supporters: bad news for all the Egyptians who fear that they will never know democracy because of the ‘American veto’.