Double or nothing

I remain convinced the Bush administration intends to either find a reason to strike Iran before leaving office next January, or at least create a situation where his successor has few options but a military confrontation. Despite the recent release of a new National Intelligence Estimate downplaying the imminent threat of an Iranian Bomb, the usual suspects are still shouting the need for "preemptive" action:

Leading neoconservative thinker Norman Podhoretz is back, and so is the campaign to bomb Iran. Podhoretz has a followup to his 2007 Commentary article, The Case for Bombing Iran, in a lengthy new piece arguing that his case is still valid despite the recent adjustment in U.S. intelligence's assessment of the threat posed by Iran. Podhoretz remains thoroughly convinced of the need to bomb Iran to prevent the Islamic Republic from gaining a nuclear weapon. ...

Podhoretz's reasoning ... is not altogether unreasonable. Iran's behavior and ambitions do pose serious strategic challenges; U.S. intelligence does have an uneven record of assessing threats; the NIE does change the calculus in dealings with Iran. The problem as before is that Podhoretz's case for bombing Iran rests on something more: a simplistic, vastly overblown depiction of the Iranian regime and the threat that it poses--as if the long, troubled history of the Middle East were a Marvel comic book story of super-heroes and super-villains.

Comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler suggests an intolerable if unintended trivialization of the Nazi Holocaust; in the three decades since the '79 revolution, no Iranian army has invaded another country. Iranian Jews may not be living in paradise, but they are represented in the Iranian parliament and have managed to emigrate safely to Israel.

Iran clearly does seek to become a regional superpower. That may be very worrying but it is not very surprising. No other country in the Gulf has even half the size of Iran's population. But having strategic ambitions is hardly the same as having genocidal ones.

Might Iran's aggressive posture toward the U.S. be related to certain U.S. policies toward Iran, such as the CIA overthrow of Iran's prime minister in 1953, support for the Shah's repressive regime for a quarter century, backing for Saddam Hussein's war against Iran from 1980-88 and efforts to undermine the current government?

America has grown used to covering over foreign policy deficiencies by breaking out the cold steel. As the resistance to Ron Paul's campaign shows, our nation isn't willing to be introspective long enough to figure out if we are at least part of the problem in the world's various festering issues. It's simply easier to break out the weapons and beat our chests.

One of these days, we'll figure out that's the more expensive option.