Here's the situation. Iran wants the bomb, and is doing everything it can to get the bomb short of actually getting it. In the meantime they're delaying, obfuscating, and using their oil to pressure heavyweights like China and Russia to block any UN sanctions. The US is blustering, making empty threats, and coyly allowing talk of "nuclear war planning" to leak to the media (and then denying the rumors), in an effort to frighten Iran into backing off its nuclear course.
As things stand, the US is going to lose this one. Europe, though not arrayed against us as in Iraq, has no stomach for a real confrontation with anybody at the moment; weak sanctions are the sharpest claws they'd be willing to use. And America's misadventure in Iraq has left us militarily weak, financially overstretched, and lacking any credibility in the international community.
Checkmate.
So what do we do? First we try putting sanctions on investment into Iran, hoping that'll work. It won't.
So then we bomb Iran.
We let Bush do it, because the world basically can't hate Bush more than it does. And bomb Bush will - it's all he knows how to do. It won't be an all-out war, but a surgical strike to set back Iran's nuclear program. Low casualties, low cost, no troop commitment. Lots of nations will hate America for doing it, but hopefully when Bush leaves some of their hate will ebb. And the Iranians, who love their president Ahmadinejad because he's a proud nationalist, will think twice when they see him utterly powerless to make any kind of response to omnipotent foreign warplanes.
All options should be on the table for this one - sanctions, "carrot" offers to Iran, diplomacy of every kind. But we have to keep the military option firmly on the table, because without it, diplomacy is toothless and impotent. And if worst comes to worst, and it's a choice between a unilateral pinpoint strike (similar to Clinton's 1998 strike against Iraq) and allowing Iran to have the bomb, we'll just have to suck it up and do the dirty work.
The alternative, a nuclear-armed Iran, would just lead to full-scale war in the future, as well as a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race...and who doubts that such an arms race would eventually put a nuke in terrorist hands? Better that a couple hundred Iranian nuclear scientists and guards should die than the Middle East be plunged into even greater chaos.
So that's my Iran strategy. What, you expected a creative, original answer? Pshaw. All I know is what I've read from articles, whose writers admit they have no idea what to do.
PS - The Nation, a liberal stalwart, has run this wishy-washy editorial discussing the "sensitive topic" of the infamous anti-semitic "Israel Lobby" paper. Using the technique of moral equivalence (i.e. "We're on the weak side of the issue so we'll pretend the two sides are equal") with the skill of a Fox News anchor, they condemn the "furor" over the article as "bordering on the hysterical, are designed to shut off debate and intimidate the professors and anyone else who asks hard questions about the US-Israel relationship." Basically, this means that the Nation's editors support the paper's conclusion - that the shadowy Israel Lobby dominates American foreign policy - but are too chicken to come out and say it. And they're chicken to come out and say it because most people are against it. And most people are against it because it's bullshit.
PPS - Here's a story about how some Christian groups are suing to protect their right to publicly bash gays. These are not the sort of Christians I was advocating inviting to the liberal movement, by the way. But the best part is this quote:
"Think how marginalized racists are," said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom. "If we don't address this now, it will only get worse."That must have been taken out of context...
PPPS - On a lighter note...Just the invention humankind has been searching for...a laser that destroys fat!!
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