The debate over the skin on DKos today seems fairly short-sighted. The truth is that there is a regime that controls Iran that has a long-standing and fairly well-earned hatred of the U.S., completely as a result of foreign policy decisions from our country's past.
It is of vast import to separate the citizens of Iran from the regime that controls their lives, but it is equally important to understand that the regime, not the citizens, controls Iran's foreign policy and has in the past been a state sponsor of terrorism.
So, while we may be on the side of the reformers and the opposition movement in Iran, it is still important to understand that the regime that still controls the country is very much our enemy, and has on multiple occasions in the past sponsored attacks against Americans and our allies. Furthermore, the goal of the skin is, in my opinion, quite a noble one: to make Americans understand that climate change is not a tree hugger issue; it's a national security issue.
While we may not definitively know whether the Iranian regime is responsible for any of the IEDs that have plagued our troops in Iraq, we do know the following:
So as you can see, our country's adversarial history with Iran goes much further back than just the Iraq war. The Iranian regime has a host of reasons to "justify" whatever anti-American actions they deem appropriate, and it is not at all out of the realm of possibility that weapons and training are being provided by Shiites in Iran to Shiites in Iraq. Furthermore, imagine what we'd be doing if the Iranian regime had a ring of military bases along our borders with Canada and Mexico.
This is not to say that I in any way support attacks on Iran, or worse, a war on Iran. We make more enemies that way. However, the point that the money we spend on oil ultimately goes, for the most part, to regimes that oppose us and support terror against us and our allies could not be more valid; we have historical precedence for it in abundance. And, let's face it, the majority of our country are not self-described liberals (see the image titled, Self-Reported Ideology by Generation), and certainly when it comes to the issue of climate change we are losing the messaging war. I think VoteVets are absolutely on to something by making climate change a national security issue -- one that resonates with voters of all ideological stripes -- because it's a clear example of cause and effect: you fill up your tank, your money is going to regimes that hate us.
Ultimately, it's pure folly to buy into the notion that the Iranian regime wouldn't (or isn't) attacking us by providing weapons and support to groups in Iraq who have the access to to just that. We know it's been done in the past in other venues, and we know our government (the American regime, heh) has given them plenty of reasons to want to attack us. And what's worse, as long as we involve ourselves in wars in the Persian Gulf region, we will continue to give them the motive and the opportunity to do it again.
Climate Change is a national security issue and VoteVets are correct in making it one.