Fisting

This is the correct term for the Obama (and before him, Bush) Iran policy.  The ideal window of opportunity to take out the mullahgarchy and its nuclear weapons ambitions was in 2003, when the U.S. had the military, diplomatic, and geostrategic winds at its back.  Instead, President Bush squandered five years fisting his policy gherkin on one round of risibly futile "negotiations" and "sanctions" after another, with the only measurable difference between his approach and that of his mule-eared successor being his use of the Brits, French, and Germans as diplomatic cutouts.  Comrade Hussein opted for direct risibly futile negotiations, which have produced the exact same result: the acceleration of the Islamic Empire of Iran's hurtling drive for nuclear weapons.

So here was sit in the summer of 2010, with Iran almost certainly in possession of several nuclear warheads (procured and/or indigenous) and now, suddenly, it dawns on TPTB that maybe all these years of masturpacifisting have been a complete and terrifyingly dangerous waste of time?

Yes, my friends, it just might be true:

In late 2006, George W. Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and asked if military action against Iran’s nuclear program was feasible. The unanimous answer was no. Air strikes could take out some of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but there was no way to eliminate all of them. Some of the nuclear labs were located in heavily populated areas; others were deep underground. And Iran’s ability to strike back by unconventional means, especially through its Hizballah terrorist network, was formidable. The military option was never officially taken off the table. At least, that’s what U.S. officials always said. But the emphasis was on the implausibility of a military strike. “Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in 2008. It would be “disastrous on a number of levels.”

This, of course, assumes that there won't be "another" war in the Middle East unless we initiate it.  But isn't it at least a possibility that some other power in that region might be a lot more eager than we are to launch a war of aggression, conquest, and [ahem] terror? 

Nobody wanted "peace" more than the British and French seventy-one years ago; they didn't think "another war in Europe" was "infeasible," they considered it unthinkable, so much so that they simply refused to think about it at all, choosing instead to bury themselves in the happy, comforting folds of pacifist fantasy.  But Adolph Hitler was very interested in another European war, and the foolish softheadedness of his intended victims convinced him more than anything else that he could win it.  And so the Western powers got the exact opposite of the end they sought precisely by their stupid unwillingness to do what was necessary to prevent it.

I understand what the then-Pentagon brass were saying.  In a nutshell, they didn't want to attack Iran.  Well, join the club, gentlemen.  There's a reason why war is supposed to be the last resort.  Nobody but a berserker wants war.  But sometimes war isn't a question of if, but of when and how.  And compared to seventy years ago, it's actually worse this time around. 

Hitler could have been deterred if the "Entente Cordial" had taken a tough stand against his signals of renewed aggression in 1936 when he eviscerated the Versailles Treaty by remilitarizing the Rhineland.  Instead, the West did nothing.  They could have occupied the Ruhr Valley if he annexed Austria in 1938.  Instead, the West did nothing.  Chamberlain and Daladier could have gone to Munich in September of that year with an ultimatum: moving on the Sudetenland means war.  Instead, they gave it to him.  He took the rest of Czechoslovakia within six months, and attacked Poland within the year.  The result of all those efforts to avoid war?  War, on Hitler's terms, when Germany was at its strongest.

Could the mullahs have been "disarmed" without war?  Sure - years ago.  Perhaps as late as 2003, if we'd made an all out effort to encourage and support Iranian dissident groups.  But....we never did.  And with each passing round of "negotiations" and "sanctions," we convinced Tehran all the more that they had nothing to fear from us and a Global Caliphate to gain once they had the ultimate weapon.  Hell, why do you think Ali Khamanie installed Adolph Ahmadinejad as his frontman in 2005?  That was all the telling expression of dripping contempt for us as a "superpower" the Bushies should have needed to realize that the window of opportunity for regime change without war had slammed shut.

As Ensign Ed points out, the chance for an Operation Iranian Freedom was nullified by the blatantly partisan and laughable 2007 NIE claiming that Iran abandoned nukes as the tanks were thundering into Baghdad.  To the degree that the possibility of military action against the mullahgarchy might have been holding them back, that removed all possibility of deterrence.

By this time, the game is pretty much over.  An irrational, apocalyptic, undeterrable regime of crazy theocrats who see their Second Coming, um, coming through nuclear conflagration now has nuclear weapons capability.

And NOW we get this question:

Gates is sounding more belligerent these days. “I don’t think we’re prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran,” he told Fox News on June 20. “We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons.” In fact, Gates was reflecting a new reality in the military and intelligence communities. Diplomacy and economic pressure remain the preferred means to force Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal, but there isn’t much hope that’s going to happen. “Will [sanctions] deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability?” CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News on June 27. “Probably not.” So the military option is very much back on the table.

What has changed? “I started to rethink this last November,” a recently retired U.S. official with extensive knowledge of the issue told me. “We offered the Iranians a really generous deal, which their negotiators accepted,” he went on, referring to the offer to exchange Iran’s 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (3.5% pure) for higher-enriched (20%) uranium for medical research and use. “When the leadership shot that down, I began to think, Well, we made the good-faith effort to engage. What do we do now?”

The answer is real, real simple, dumbass: You wait for the inevitable Iranian attack.  Or the inevitable desparate Israeli attempt to pre-empt it.  And hope against hope that they don't have nukes yet after all.

In short, the military option will be back on the table because you will have allowed our enemies to take that choice away from us.

Oh, and India and Pakistan are about to nuke each other as well.

Happy fisting, Barry.