Oh, wonderful

According to the Daily Telegraph war plans are underway in Washington and London for air strikes against Iran.

There are a number of things that strike me about this. The first is that purely as an anti-proliferation measure, this makes a hell of a lot more sense than did the invasion of Iraq, though, for my money, it's still nuts. From what I can understand, the Iranian nuclear program has metastasized to the point that it's unclear that airstrikes can wipe it out. It seems to me that starting a war-and with 150,000+ US and British troops next door in Iraq, it would be a much nastier war than previous airstrike only wars have been from a Western perspective-for a goal that might very well be unattainable with the means at hand is a crazy idea. On the other hand, these are the guys who thought to spread democracy through the Middle East by invading Iraq.

Also, I'm not entirely certain why it's in U.S. or British interests to start a war with Iran to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon in the first place; the Iranians, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know that using a nuke against American forces in the Middle East or via terrorists against the American or British mainlands would result in the nuclear annihiliation of Iran. As evidence, I'd cite the North Korean example: Kim Jong Il is about as batty a dictator as has ever existed, but he did not, on realizing his nuclear ambitions, immediately vaporize Seoul and Pusan. It seems reasonably clear to me that the reasons these various evil regimes in Islamabad, Pyongyang and Tehran are pursuing the Bomb are primarily defensive; Saddam's fall did serve as an object lesson to tyrants, but it seems to have taught the exact opposite lesson from the one that was intended.

That nothwithstanding there are, conversely, strong reasons for Israelis to fear that the Iranians might use a nuclear weapon against them, and while I'm inclined to believe that a nuclear armed Iran would settle into the Soviet Union role in the Middle Eastern production of Cold War: The Sequel (now playing in South Asia, to mixed reviews) I can understand why people living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem wouldn't want to take that risk.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that if this is worth doing, which I seriously doubt, it should be done by the Israeli Air Force, rather than the USAF and RAF. No matter who it's done by, bombing Iran is overwhelmingly likely to make the bloody pig's breakfast that is the Middle East even bloodier and more intractable, but an Osirik-style operation might, conceivably, manage to avoid some of the hazards of an American bombing raid and has no worse a chance of success.

Kevin Drum, over at the Washington Monthly, asks what the US domestic politics of this whole schmozzle are likely to be, and specifically what Democrats should say when, rather than if, the completely depraved Republican machine starts beating the war drums for electoral gain.

I think, at that point, the Democrats need to go directly at Bush and his cronies' competence. Back when this movie was playing for the first time, liberals split into camps composed of people who thought the war in Iraq was a good idea and those who thought it was a bad idea on the merits. I was in the latter camp. It seems to me, though, that the honourable and intelligent people who argued in favour of the war-and there were, of course, a lot of them-really didn't pay enough attention to who exactly was going to be running the damn thing. Many of these people are smarter than I am. Michael Ignatieff, for example. But while I was sometimes swayed into doubt as to the merits of the war in the abstract (maybe Saddam does have chemical and biolgical weapons, maybe his regime really is uniquely heinous enough to justify a humanitarian intervention, etc.) I never wavered that whatever the merits of the case for war, I didn't trust this gang of idiots with the lives and deaths of thousands and thousands of people. And, not to crow over this - there's nothing crow-worthy about a botched war that has killed tens of thousands of people for nothing - but I was completely and utterly right.

So given that there's not a chance in Hell that the Democratic Party's various bigwigs will agree on the merits of bombing Iran - I can't, for instance, imagine Russ Feingold and Joe Lieberman issuing a joint statement on it - I think the "competence dodge" might actually work here. It's something that every Democrat worthy of the name can agree to, it has a punchiness to it that a more nuanced position would lack, and it has the merit of being true.