Iraq II: Will we be THAT stupid again?

Charlie K. absolutely nailed the threat that we face from Iran and the perils of attacking it. I think the scenarios he gives basically play out, with one big change. I don't see the U.S. being the one who attacks the reactors -- I think we encourage Israel to do it behind closed doors. Israel, believing that Iran is its biggest enemy in the region and the primary supporter of Hezbollah, tries to recreate its 1981 strike on Saddam's nuclear reactor. We give them as much help as we can while keeping plausible deniability. Within hours, there is a U.N. resolution condemning the attacks and asking for sanctions against Israel and after some public hem-hawwing, we block the resolution. From there....well, Krauthammer laid it out pretty well.

One problem which Charlie K. did not highlight is that an Iran strike would be much more difficult than the 81 Iraq strike. In Iraq, there was a single reactor and everyone knew that destroying it would set back Saddam's nuclear ambitions for decades. In this case, we don't know where every reactor is and it would be nearly impossible to render every single one to be non-operational. "If it launched an attack and removed some unknown proportion of the facilities, the United States might retard Iran's progress by an unknown number of months or years—at the cost of inviting all-out Iranian retaliation." (That came from an article by the always excellent James Fallows in the Dec. 2004 Atlantic Monthly.)

The worst of it is that there isn't a good solution. We could have a man who was a combination of the best qualities of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy, FDR, Truman, JFK and Reagan in office and that man wouldn't have a good solution. We cannot afford to let Iran get tactical nuclear weapons and become the preeminent power in the Middle East and there is no good way, diplomatically or militarily, to keep that from happening.

 

And Jack Ryan

 

Great piece by Krauthamer.

 

Junkie, the biggest reason for hope with Iran is that the younger generation is very pro-Western and could be the key into turning Iran into another Turkey: a stable, modern Islamic country. But how do we behead the monster on top without alienating the very people we want to run the country.

 

By equipping them to do the job for us, kinda like all of our Central American schemes of the past.

 

Of all the insane, bloodthirsty ramblings on the subject, I'd have to say his was the most stylish.