Poor Mexico, the saying goes:  So far from God, and so close to the United States. Iran, one is tempted to say, suffers from the opposite problem, producing the same result: Perhaps it is too close to God (some would say too religious) and too far from the United States (some would say too ignored by the US now where it had been too controlled by it before). But even that is not exactly right: Obama is correct in keeping his distance now; the US would only complicate matters. And perhaps more distance from religion is not the solution either; as Gandhi once said, those who say religion and the state should be separate do not understand the nature of religion.

Political conflict is rarely simple. If any one party wins completely, all lose. If all parties are to win, none can win completely. Gandhi and King struggled with this quandary. Today nonviolence is too often seen as a tactic to avoid harm by a stronger enemy; Gandhi and King saw it as a moral principle - the willingness to suffer even more by resisting without fighting than by fighting back, so as to convince, rather than defeat, one's enemy.