"The Bush administration has rightly refrained from criticizing the region's only democracy, Israel, for its forceful response to a thousand rockets fired at its population. U.S. reticence is seemly, considering that terrorism has been Israel's torment for decades, and that America responded to two hours of terrorism one September morning by toppling two regimes halfway around the world with wars that show no signs of ending.
The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to The Weekly Standard - voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservativism" - everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.
"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . . " You get the drift. So, The Weekly Standard says:
"We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions - and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."
"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate, in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Assad's regime does not fall after The Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?
As for the "healthy" repercussions that The Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises - all of them unpleasant - that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that The Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation - the bombing of Syria?
Neoconservatives have much to learn, even from Buddy Bell, manager of the Kansas City Royals. After his team lost its 10th consecutive game in April, Bell said, "I never say it can't get worse." In their next game, the Royals extended their losing streak to 11 and in May lost 13 in a row."
It isn't as if the transformation of George from conservative thinker to borderline liberal contrarian has happened overnight, but it's happening. Of course the blow-them-all-to hell conservatives are evoking childish refrains to virtually every problem the country faces, but it's an option, George, a calamitous one to be certain but this is what happens when a Clinton spends 8 years letting the world go to pot, and is replaced by a cowboy. Those 8 years drove many of us to the point of distraction and the urge to right many a wrong, and do it NOW, is a beating heart with a mind of it's own, something akin to a passion, George. Couple that with the fact that Bloated Bill might send his spouse to continue the liberal legacy of appeasement followed by giveaways then more appeasement once the cowboy rides off into the sunset, and its easy to understand the call for getting the job done NOW. And as far as the US Military being stretched, well of course it is. Always has been. Always will be. That's why the good Lord gave us cruise missiles, George.
And yes; cliche, hyperbole, and even portmanteau you neocon hater, have taken the place of long term planning, but that's because we were long term screwed by the Bloated One, and while Rome wasn't built in a day, George, time is, of the essence.
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