At Sea in the Persian Gulf

There was a hyper paranoid film released at the tail end of the Cold War called “Red Dawn." In it, a band of midwestern teens fights to save America from invading Soviet forces. Not all those teenagers were young Republicans -- some, I suspect, were left-wingers with a few full-blown pinkos thrown in, to boot. Nationalism trumps ideology every time.

So what makes vice president Cheney think if we muscled our way into Iran, bands of Persian teens would be breaking out the garlands and flowers? Unless it's simplistic public psych-opp bluster, the administration is actually contemplating taking apart the Iranian nuclear program (such as it is). Another wonderful example of muddled non policy. Why did we go into Iraq, again? Wolfowitz et. al. must be gathering on the White House lawn nightly and howling at the moon.

We'll either change the face of the Mideast (as though they haven’t been trying for the last thousand years) or there'll be a second Bush's Folly. Left to their own devices, those Iranian teenagers may very well use those flowers to supplant the aging mullahs who have run Iran into the ground. So just let them do it.

The Brits were far better hegemons; we seem to be making a mess of it. To be honest, I had rather have a bit of Kissinger realpolitik than neo-con naivety.