The IAEA is calling out Iran for its lack of cooperation concerning its nuclear program. Will it lead to real sanctions? Not if the Russians and Chinese have anything to say about it, and they do.

Of course, if you listen to the State Department, "Iran is not Iraq". Bill Kristol is very unhappy about that phrase.

Of course, Iraq isn't Vietnam, or is it?

In the end, because the President didn't follow through on his Bush Doctrine rhetoric to its logical conclusion of unlimited war against terrorist sponsoring regimes, because he chose to try and keep this war a limited one, then just as in Korea and Vietnam the public, led by its political, academic and media elites, lost the heart to prosecute the war. We have never won a long, tough, limited war in the modern era. I hope we will break that pattern with Iraq, but I am not optimistic.

WHY I WON'T GO SEE UNITED 93

United 93, the film about the heroism of ordinary Americans who thwarted part of Al Qaeda's monstrous plans for 9/11, is set to debut on April 29. It has already been shown to some preview audiences and critics. Thus far, the reviews that I have seen are all positive. It helps that the film was written, produced and directed with the input of the families of the heroes on that flight. In fact, one of the FAA controllers who was on duty that day actually plays himself in the movie. Some folks are urging Americans to see the movie, including the father of the most famous of the passengers, Todd Beamer, who announced their counter-attack with 'Let's roll'.

Paul Greengrass and Universal set out to tell the story of United Flight 93 on that terrible day in our nation's history. They set about the task of telling this story with a genuine intent to get it right--the actions of those on board and honor their memory. Their extensive research included reaching out to all the families who had lost loved ones on United Flight 93 as the first casualties of this war. And Paul and his team got it right.

You can't get a much better recommendation than that, can you? Still, I won't go to see United 93. Not because I can't stand the thought of Hollywood depicting this moment of extraordinary heroism by ordinary Americans. I take Mr. Beamer at his word. If he thinks the filmmakers got it right, then who am I to argue with him. Rather, the reason I won't see United 93 is that I already share Mr. Beamer's view of the war we are in.

In this case and at this time, it is appropriate to get a dose of reality about this war and the real enemy we face. It is not too soon for this story to be told, seen and heard. But it is too soon for us to become complacent. It is too soon for us to think of this war in only national terms. We need to be mindful that this enemy, who made those holes in our landscape and caused the deaths of some 3,000 of our fellow free people, has a vision to personally kill or convert each and every one of us. This film reminds us that this war is personal. This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty--the liberty that has been secured for us by those whose names are on those walls in Battery Park and so many other walls and stones throughout this nation. This enemy seeks to take away the free will that our Creator has endowed in us. Patrick Henry got it right some 231 years ago. Living without liberty is not living at all.

The passengers and crew of United 93 had the blessed opportunity to understand the nature of the attack and to launch a counterattack against the enemy. This was our first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war--World War III.

This film further reminds us of the nature of the enemy we face. An enemy who will stop at nothing to achieve world domination and force a life devoid of freedom upon all. Their methods are inhumane and their targets are the innocent and unsuspecting. We call this conflict the "War on Terror." This film is a wake-up call. And although we abhor terrorism as a tactic, we are at war with a real enemy and it is personal.

Well said, and oh so true. Which is why I can't see the film. On that day, sitting in a radio studio in Manchester, NH, I reported the events to my listeners, struggling all the while to contain my emotions. I knew we were under attack, and that we were at war. When it became known that one of the hijacked planes had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, I knew that the passengers or crew had done something to cause it to happen. When that was confirmed during the days that followed, it became even harder to contain my emotions.

Today, seeing that film would not just be a matter of containing my emotions as I watched the cinematic depiction of the events of that terrible day. I could probably endure an hour or two of weeping. What I could not endure is the unvarnished anger that would fill my soul. Anger that our leaders have failed us. Anger that our media elites have failed us. Anger that too many ordinary Americans, following the lead of their leaders and the press, have fallen back into their pre-9/11 slumber.

We are at war, but the President didn't ask Congress to declare it, nor did he ask the American people as a whole to enlist in the fight. Thus, it is no surprise that so many Americans now do not believe we are at war, and so many in Congress and the press can act as if they have no duty to help in the war effort.

I will not see United 93, because I do not wish to subject myself to the white-hot realization that our enemies have the fanatical will to do whatever it takes to win, and that ordinary Americans have the extraordinary courage to fight back with whatever they have, but that our leaders in politics, the media, academia and business lack the imagination and the conviction to lead us in this fight to the death.

While the Iranian Supreme Leader is telling foreign leaders his country is willing to share nuclear technology, the Russians are helping the Israelis monitor Iran's nuclear activity.

The "We Know What's Best For You" crowd exposed.

Could Iran be the unhappy ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf?

Max Boot exposes the anti-American media, who seem bent on winning Pulitzers while bashing our leaders and endangering national security.

Michael Goodwin says the latest lackluster effort by the President to respond to rising gas prices is just another example of a President who seems resigned to defeat.

John Dickerson says the GOP is screwed (when it comes to the November elections).

Here is why an episode of South Park tells us that the Danish cartoon wars are over, and we lost.
The common thread in all of these items? Each represents a little piece of evidence to indicate that we in the West will lose to the fanatics in the end. The fanatics are supremely confident that we will not have the courage to stop their nuclear ambitions. They need only watch as we continue our internal squabbling, with the political opposition and the media actively working to defeat our wartime leaders, up to the point of rewarding behavior which weakens us. The President bears much of the blame, in my view, and he is, perhaps, beginning to realize that he has blown it. His party is about to go down in flames and, even if they do not, they are so weakened as to be ineffective. Public opinion is now firmly anti-Bush and anti-war, such that folks inside the military and intelligence communities feel comfortable in actively undercutting our war effort, and the media acts as their most ardent cheerleaders. The cartoon war fiasco shows how so many are now running to cut deals with the fanatics ("Just tell us what we can't see so that we won't offend you").

I am sickened by the defeatism and lack of resolution. I am sickened by a public and media that refuse to see the threat, and a broader Western public so addicted to their social welfare states that they are now almost to the point of being properly fattened for the slaughter. Will we wake up in time? If so, I'd like to see the evidence for it and not just rely on the hope that the same will that drove America to use all its power to crush the Nazis and the Japanese militarists is lying dormant in the heart of today's Americans, just waiting for trumpet call.

President Ahmadinejad of Iran is hinting that they might pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the United Nations puts sanctions on Iran. This would make the international political situation a bit more clear for the President in terms of getting support for further sanctions, but not necessarily for creating a coalition in favor of military action. The point may be moot, as the Russians and Chinese will oppose sanctions, which means the Iranians will not have to follow through on the threat.

Michael Rubin, who has written a book about Iran, is questioned about that country on the National Review's website. He has an interesting perspective on the nature of Iran (think Persia more than Islam).

As always in this situation, the wildcard is the Israelis. We have another Israeli official warning about Iran's nuclear program, this time saying that the Iranian threat is the "worst threat to the Jews since Hitler". If diplomacy fails, is there any possibility that the Israelis won't strike Iran?

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe has finally recognized the existence of the Conservative opposition to the President's aggressive foreign policy. If they had asked me, I could have told them about that five years ago.

On the domestic side, Newt Gingrich says the GOP majority is in jeopardy. He is right.

Robert Samuelson says the President's troubles are about policy, not people, which means the current staff shake-up won't do any good. He is right, too.

The way Osama bin Laden keeps sending out these audiotape pronouncements, one might think that he is beginning to feel irrelevant. Not such a bad thing, after all.

Here is an argument for bombing Iran, and here is an argument against. My view remains the same. If the President has enough public and congressional support for war with Iran, then he should go to Congress and ask for a declaration of war. If he gets such a declaration, he should direct the military to defeat Iran so totally that the mullahs are overthrown. The consequences of war with Iran are so serious it should not be waged for anything other then the biggest possible reward. Without public or congressional support, no military action should be taken against Iran. Unlike Afghanistan, they are not being accused of harboring the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 (at least, not by the Administration). If they were harboring such terrorists, then one could make the case that they are allied with our enemies, and should be treated in the same manner, which would require making war against them, as we did with the Taliban. Unlike Iraq, they are not in violation of any U.N. resolutions that resulted from a cease-fire agreement that ended a prior war. They are not yet in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They have no record of invading their neighbors. They do have a record of supporting terrorists, which annually places them on the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism. But, of course, we have not attacked any of the other nations on that list (except Afghanistan and Iraq). If the President had really meant what he said after 9/11, that we would treat any nation that is allied with the terrorists the same as the terrorists, then he would have called for a doubling or tripling of the size of the military and launched attacks against Libya, Iran and all the others on the list (not at the same time, of course, but one-by-one). But, of course, he didn't really mean it at the time. He continues to offer the rhetoric of war without the action, which is why he has lost so many of his own supporters, in addition to the people who never bought the idea that this is a war we are fighting in the first place (and those who have changed their minds about it as 9/11 fades in memory).

Can the President regain the initiative? He can, of course, order an attack against Iran, and the military will execute the plan. I suspect they will succeed in crippling Iran's air force and air defense system, and do serious damage to their nuclear facilities. They will probably also succeed in sinking whatever navy the Iranians possess, and eliminating their ability to fire missiles into the Strait of Hormuz. But they won't succeed in overthrowing the mullahs and, without that objective, the action will only succeed in causing chaos on the oil markets and unleashing thousands of fanatical Iranians on suicide missions against our forces in Iraq, and against other targets in the Middle East, Europe and, perhaps, here at home.

The race for Mayor of New Orleans will be between current Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu. The runoff election is required since no candidate received fifty percent of the voter. This article explains the details. Whoever wins will face one of the most daunting tasks ever faced by the mayor of a major American city. How to rebuild a city that will face a threat of catastrophic flooding every hurricane season and that may not ever get back a significant portion of its population, as so many have found more economic opportunity elsewhere? Read this article in the New York Times about how that process is going. I predict that not only will New Orleans face the wrath of further immense hurricanes in the next couple of years, but that many of her displaced residents will never return.

The military has come up with a new plan to fight terrorism world-wide, generated by Special Operations Command at the behest of Secretary Rumsfeld, according to this article in the Washington Post. They envision a "long war". But will the plan remain in place even if the Democrats take back not only Congress, but the White House?

The Belmont Club has some good coverage and analysis of the Mary McCarthy fiasco at the CIA. I agree with his prediction that McCarthy will come to join the Liberal pantheon of heroes, even if the stuff she leaked has damaged national security. When I consider stories like this one it makes me wonder if, in the end, we will be unable to do the things necessary to win this war we are fighting, or the next one.

With the crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants only a few days old, there are already questions concerning the seriousness of the effort. The biggest reason for skepticism is the size of the force being sent out to enforce our laws. This, of course, is also true when looking at border security. The Bush Administration will not be taken seriously on this issue until they step up and ask Congress for a MAJOR expansion in the size of the Border Patrol and the enforcement arm of the INS (or whatever they are calling it now that it is part of Homeland Security).

Finally, the CIA fires someone for leaking classified information to the press. It is long past time for the Administration to go after those who would leak classified information in wartime. This failure to go after the leakers, along with the border security issue, is one of the main reasons why President Bush has lost so much of his support. People who voted for him in 2004 are finally getting fed up with his rhetoric of war without the actions of war, and are now joining those who already didn't approve of the job he is doing.

Charlie Cook has a breakdown of the numbers and concludes that Republicans should be very worried about the upcoming elections. The intensity of opposition to the President is on the rise, and could develop into a political tsunami that brings the Democrats to power in Congress.

Craig Shirley has a theory as to why the GOP seems to be falling apart.

Finally, I was wrong about how long it would take to agree on a new Prime Minister in Iraq. It seems that an aide to Jaafari is the consensus pick. This could pave the way for the formation of a new government, which can only help the situation on the ground in that troubled country.

If we can take the recent announcement of a crackdown against companies that hire illegals sincerely, then it is very good news, indeed. Perhaps the folks in the Bush Administration are getting the message that the majority of ordinary Americans are fed up with a system that is broken and is a threat to our national security, and creating problems for those on the lower end of the wage scale. For too long the GOP has been listening to its business interests and not the folks at the grass roots on this issue. Perhaps they now realize that all of the corporate money in the world won't keep then in control of Congress in November, only the turnout of their grass roots base will do that.

So, now we know the size and budget of our intelligence services. It wasn't leaked by someone in the shadows, but, rather, by top officials. I thought this stuff was classified?

Jaafari will step aside as Iraqi Prime Minister, which is good news. But don't hold your breath waiting for them to come to a decision on who ought to be the next PM.

Some scientists from Duke University are downplaying the more extreme global warming scenarios. So, now who should we believe?

Massachusetts is losing people at a rate exceeded only by New York. As a member of the Bay State diaspora, I think I know why (and it is not because it is cold there, people are moving to New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont). People are leaving Massachusetts because it is cheaper to live elsewhere. Combine high taxes with high housing costs, then throw in energy costs, and you get a recipe for emigration. The northern New England states either have lower taxes (New Hampshire) or relatively cheaper home prices (Vermont and Maine). All three states have a lower crime rate, as well and a more rural lifestyle (especially compared to Eastern Massachusetts).

Deroy Murdock urges folks to see United 93, which is the new movie about the hijacking of that ill-fated airliner and the heroic efforts of the passengers to defeat the terrorists, which they did at the cost of their lives. I'm not sure I want to see it in a theater, I prefer to do my weeping in private.

Paul Kane, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, has an interesting new argument for why we should re-instate the draft.

THE American public needs to be prepared for what is shaping up to be a clash of colossal proportions between the West and Iran.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt masterfully prepared Americans before the United States entered World War II by initiating a peacetime draft under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.

Now, President Bush and Congress should reinstitute selective service under a lottery without any deferments.

This single action will send a strong message to three constituencies in the crisis over Iran's nuclear intentions — Iran, outside powers like China and Russia and Americans at home — and perhaps lead to a peaceful resolution.

Iran's leaders and public will see that the United States is serious about ensuring that they never possess a nuclear weapon. The Chinese and Russian governments will see that their diplomatic influence should be exercised sooner rather than later and stop hanging back. But most important, America's elites and ordinary citizens alike will know that they may be called upon for wartime service and sacrifice.

Read the whole thing.

While we are struggling with the Iraq War, and facing the possibility of an Iran War, and still trying to put an end to the Afghanistan War, Bill Gertz writes about how the Pentagon is preparing for the Great China War.

The Pentagon is engaged in an extensive buildup of military forces in Asia as part of a covert strategy to strengthen and position U.S. and allied forces to deter -- or defeat -- China. The buildup includes changes in deployments of aircraft-carrier battle groups, the conversion of nuclear-missile submarines and the regular dispatch of bombers to areas close to targets in China, according to senior Bush administration officials and a three-month investigation by The Washington Times.

Other less-visible activities that are part of what is being called a "hedge" strategy include large-scale military maneuvers, increased military alliances and training with Asian allies, the transfer of special-operations commando forces to Asia and new requirements for military personnel to learn Chinese.

Read the whole thing. It makes me wonder how long we can keep these kind of military commitments going before we finally collapse from the financial strain, as other empires have done in the past.

As Europe struggles with its unassimilated immigrants, let us not choose to go down the same path. As Robert Samuelson points out, assimilation is the key. A guest worker program, by its very nature, does not give the immigrant any incentive to assimilate into the mainstream of our country. Only a clear path to citizenship will do that. Each wave of immigrants to this country came here to make a new life. Almost all of them knew they would never return to their native lands, except as visitors. They came here and earned a stake in the great American experiment. Mexican immigrants are, by and large, no different. Let us reform our system by building a more secure border to control the flow, and bring the 11 million illegals into the mainstream. It's the only way.

In all the excitement surrounding the story of retired generals calling for the Defense Secretary's scalp, Richard Brookhiser wonders about their lack of alternatives. To say that Rumsfeld messed up is all well and good. The more important question is, what do we do now? It could be, as Ralph Peters writes, that democracy is much more difficult to practice than we thought. If so, the basis of the enterprise, which is the democratization of the Middle East, through the forceful interjection of American power when necessary, may require more time than an impatient American public will be willing to wait.

Meanwhile, President Hu of China is visiting the U.S., which leads to the inevitable speculation about China surpassing America in global power by mid-century. Of course, a lot can happen between now and 2045 (when an extrapolation of current trends indicates the Chinese economy will surpass the U.S.). Imagine what the world looked like in 1906, and then what it looked like in 1945, for instance, and you get the picture. Joseph Nye thinks some people are overstating China's power.

Measured by official exchange rates, China is the fourth largest economy in the world and is growing at 9 percent annually, but its income per capita is only $1,700, or one-twenty-fifth that of the United States. China's research and development is only 10 percent of the American level.

If both the United States and China continue to grow at their current rates, it is possible that China's total economy could be larger than ours in 30 years, but American per capita income will remain four times greater. In addition, China's military power is far behind, and it lacks the soft power resources such as Hollywood and world-class universities that America enjoys. In contrast, the Kaiser's Germany had already passed Great Britain in industrial production by 1900, and launched a serious military challenge to Britain's naval supremacy.

I, for one, am not willing to concede that the 21st Century will be the "Chinese Century" as the 20th was the "American Century". In 1900, while Germany was passing Great Britain, America was already passing them both. By 1945 Germany was in ruins and Great Britain was financially prostrate and on the verge of losing her empire, while the U.S. was by far the greatest economic and military power in the world. Depending on what happens in the next forty years, we could be prostrate and headed for permanent weakness, or China could be smoldering in the ruins of war or revolution, or the reverse, or neither. Rather than make a lot of airy predictions while President Hu has tea with Bill Gates, I think I'll just watch what happens.

Jonathan Rauch says it isn't a "war on terror" but, rather, a "war against Jihadism".

"I think defining who the enemy is is a real problem in this war," says Mary Habeck, a military historian at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. "If you can't define who's a real threat and who's just exercising free speech, it's a problem." As it happens, Habeck is the author of one of three new books that, taken together, suggest the time is right to name the battle. It is a war on jihadism.

Jihadism is not a tactic, like terrorism, or a temperament, like radicalism or extremism. It is not a political pathology like Stalinism, a mental pathology like paranoia, or a social pathology like poverty. Rather, it is a religious ideology, and the religion it is associated with is Islam.

But it is by no means synonymous with Islam, which is much larger and contains many competing elements. Islam can be, and usually is, moderate; Jihadism, with a capital J, is inherently radical. If the Western and secular world's nearer-term war aim is to stymie the jihadists, its long-term aim must be to discredit Jihadism in the Muslim world.

Read the whole thing (as Glenn Reynolds likes to say, via Instapundit). I have also been critical of how we characterized this war, almost since the beginning. After 9/11 I advocated a Congressional Declaration of War against Al Qaeda and Afghanistan. This would have given a legal framework for the war, and a name. The Afghanistan War would have ended quickly, which would then have been followed by U.S. participation in a U.N. sponsored peacekeeping and re-building effort in Afghanistan (much like we are doing now). We could have legally separated those prisoners who are Afghan nationals and released them to the new government after the war was over, and kept those we considered to be Al Qaeda fighters (essentially, all the non-Afghans) as POWs to be held until the war against Al Qaeda is over. While this wouldn't have altered the facts on the ground in Afghanistan today, as the enemy would still have been trying to destabilize the government, it would have allowed the President to have the backing of Congress to a much greater degree and saved us some of the public relations problems we are having concerning the prisoners at Guantanamo.

Amir Taheri has more on Iran and the nuclear question.

The Middle East is passing through the most decisive moment in is history since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The options are clear. One is to let the Khomeinist regime dominate the region and use it as the nucleus of an Islamic superpower which would then seek global domination. The other is to go for regime change in Tehran as a strategic goal. (A third option - creating an Irano-American co-dominium in the region - might not be acceptable to the Arabs and Turkey, let alone Israel.)

All three options are hard to contemplate, especially for the United States and its European allies - powers that wish to set the global agenda but are reluctant to fight for it. The problem is that by refusing to stand up against the Khomeinist regime now, the Americans and Europeans (and their allies in the Arab world) may later have to fight an even bigger and costlier war against a nuclear-armed foe.

I still believe that future historians will look back on President Bush as a man who tried to fight a series of limited wars to prevent a bigger, deadlier one. I suspect they will conclude that he failed. Of course, whether they write their books about it in English, Arabic or on stone tablets is an open question.

Amir Taheri, an Iranian himself, has "The Frightening Truth of Why Iran Wants the Bomb". He asserts that Iranian President Ahmadinejad believes he is acting on behalf of the "Hidden Imam" in an effort to provoke a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West.

In Ahmadinejad's analysis, the rising Islamic "superpower" has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim "ghazis" (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world's oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.

According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad's strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the "Dr Kissinger of Islam", President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have "run away". Iran's current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by "divine coincidence", corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.

Read the whole thing. If Taheri is right, then war is unavoidable.

Bill Crawford has another installment of his regular feature about the good news from Iraq.

Arnaud de Borchgrave has a pessimistic assessment of the global scene.

This article from the Washington Post lays out the bleak scenario for Republicans as they approach the midterm elections. Michael Barone, on the other hand, lays out the scenario that would keep the GOP in charge of Congress, despite the President's dismal approval ratings.

As the discussion continues over the possibility of air strikes against Iran, I think it might be best to determine who exactly will be a part of our new "coalition of the willing". According to this article, Great Britain will not be among them. If that is true, then can we really expect anyone to be with us, except Israel? I think not, which is why I believe we cannot launch a war against Iran without significant public support in this country, and we cannot wage it in a limited fashion. Right now, I don't sense significant public support, and I see absolutely no evidence our policy makers are willing to go all out to defeat the Iranian regime.

Richard Clarke says bombing Iran would backfire. Andrew Sullivan says it is a "lose-lose" situation. Mark Steyn says a policy of waiting until tomorrow won't cut it.

Looking at the wars we are fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Strategypage has encouraging numbers on Army re-enlistments. It seems the people who are actually fighting the wars think they are winning. Unfortunately for them, just like their fathers and grandfathers in Vietnam and Korea, the real war is being fought here at home. If the American people can be convinced that the war is unwinnable, political leaders will withdraw the troops, which will result in defeat (as in Vietnam) or stalemate (as in Korea).

Finally, looking at one of our past wars, this article examines the current political situation in Kosovo. It appears as if the political leaders in Kosovo and Serbia still cannot come to some sort of agreement on a permanent status for the province, which means it is more likely that outside powers will impose a solution, almost certainly giving Kosovo independence.

ANOTHER WAR?

President Ahmadinejad is in the news again. He has resumed his call for the annihilation of Israel. The aging Liberal Lion of Israel, Shimon Peres, has responded by saying Ahmadinejad will end up on sharing Saddam Hussein's fate. More worrisome are the statements from the Iranian General who is in charge of their Revolutionary Guards. He says that Iran can defeat the United States in the event of an attack. If this is more than just rhetoric, it may mean that there is no hope of stopping the Iranian drive to get the bomb, as they are not afraid of the stick and are not interested in any carrots.

All of this, of course, leads back to the discussion I highlighted yesterday. Is the military option feasible? General Thomas McInerney lays out how it might be done. James Fallows says it cannot be done. The bottom line remains the same for me. Attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war. Just as I believe we should have treated the seizing of our embassy in Tehran in 1979 as an act of war, the Iranians will no doubt view an air campaign against their nuclear facilities as an act of war. If we are going to go to war with Iran, with all the risks that entails, then we should do it through the legal process of having Congress pass a declaration of war. As we have seen in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, the American people will not support a long, open-ended undeclared war fought with limited means. Inevitably, even when support is strong initially, that support will drain away.

But won't the military action against Iran be a short-term affair? I cannot see a scenario whereby the Iranians just lie down and beg for mercy after we have pounded them for a few days or weeks. These are the same people who sent 12-year-old boys in human waves against Iraqi tanks, artillery and machine guns during the Iran-Iraq War. They will respond vigorously with every means at their disposal. President Ahmadinejad will consolidate his control by promulgating wartime measures which will seem obvious and necessary to most Iranians as they huddle in their homes at night under blackout conditions and hear the sounds of warplanes, anti-aircraft fire and explosions. Ayatollah Khamenei will issue calls for Holy War, which will be heard by Shiites in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. If these things happen, then we will need tremendous public support for taking the measures necessary to combat them (including expansion of the military, possibly through a draft).

Iran is not Serbia. There, the bombing campaign was designed to force the government to withdraw troops from Kosovo, which they finally did. The Serbs are Europeans, not motivated by religious fanaticism, and were finally willing to see reason.

Iran is not Iraq. The Iraqis invaded Kuwait which, under the charter of the U.N., was an act of aggression that merited a massive military response. Subsequent bombing campaigns were undertaken in the context of continued Iraqi unwillingness to live up to the cease-fire that ended the Gulf War. The Iraqi government was also, like the Serbian government, a secular entity, far different from the religiously inspired rulers of Iran.

If we are to do this, then, we must do so with the firm understanding that it will not be easy. We will not have the support of the world (as we did in the Gulf War), nor will we face an isolated Communist dictator without sympathizers in the region or the world. If we attack Iran, let us call it what it is...war. Let us declare war, and fight to not only eliminate their capacity to make nuclear weapons, but eliminate the tyrannical regime, as well.

I fear the technocrats in Washington will dismiss views like mine as unsophisticated. Of course, war is also not as sophisticated as they think. It is a murderous street fight, no holds barred, with victory as its only justification.

Apparently, the visit by IAEA chief ElBaredei didn't impress Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Not only did he say that Iran would not cease enriching uranium, he said they would expand the process. He didn't even bother to meet with Dr. ElBaredei. Not a very heartening series of events for those who hold out hope for a diplomatic solution.

Claude Salhani says the uranium enrichment brings Iran one step closer to a nuclear weapon. He interviewed some folks in the Iranian exile community who hope the world will support them more vigorously.

Reuel Marc Gerecht asks the question, "To Bomb, or Not to Bomb" in the Weekly Standard. He lays out the major objections to a bombing campaign and examines each in turn. His conclusion?

No matter what happens, it is long overdue for the Bush administration to get serious about building clandestine mechanisms to support Iranians who want to change their regime. This will take time and be brutally difficult. And overt democracy support to Iranians--which is the Bush administration's current game plan--isn't likely to draw many recruits. Most Iranians probably know that this approach is a one-way invitation to Evin prison, which isn't the most effective place for expressing dissent. However we go about assisting the opposition, the prospects for removing the regime before it acquires nuclear weapons are slim.

So we will all have to wait for President Bush to decide whether nuclear weapons in the hands of Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad, and the Revolutionary Guards Corps are something we can live with. Given the Islamic Republic's dark history, the burden of proof ought to be on those who favor accommodating a nuclear Iran. Those who are unwilling to accommodate it, however, need to be honest and admit that diplomacy and sanctions and covert operations probably won't succeed, and that we may have to fight a war--perhaps sooner rather than later--to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know.

John Podhoretz, also mindful of the many pitfalls of military action, but skeptical about a diplomatic solution, thinks the President should convene a summit of U.S. political leaders from both parties, along with defense and intelligence officials, to find a consensus about how to proceed, since leading Democrats and Republicans all seem to agree that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable.

Turning from the war we might have to fight, to the war we are currently fighting, David Ignatius joins the chorus demanding that Donald Rumsfeld step down. His argument is the best I have read so far, which is that Rumsfeld no longer has enough public credibility and, more importantly, not enough credibility within the military's officer corps, to be effective.

Finally, here is another piece, this time in the New York Times, examining the reasons behind the stagnant economies and divided electorates in France, Germany and Italy. It seems there are a lot of people who understand what needs to be done to strengthen their economies, but if they were to enact those changes, or even attempt to enact them, they would soon be voted out of office. We can look on smugly at their plight, but a similar situation will soon overtake us here in the States when we reach a crisis point for Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security spending.

THE IRANIAN DILEMMA

Now what? That is the question they are no doubt asking themselves in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin as the President of Iran announced yesterday that they have begun the process of enriching uranium, and they are not going to stop. Is this process now unstoppable? Is it, as Bill Kristol writes, unacceptable, just as the military re-occupation of the Rhineland by Hitler was unacceptable to Paris and London in 1936? Is there an international diplomatic solution, like one advocated by Brent Scowcroft? Or is military action designed to topple the regime the only way to go? Do we have a few more years before they can build a bomb, or only a few weeks or months? If military action is undertaken, will the coalition of the willing include only the United States? Mark Helprin paints a disturbing picture of what might happen after diplomacy fails.

In this war with a newly revived militant Islam, we think systematically and they think imaginatively. As we strain to bring the genius of imagination to our systems, they attempt to bring systematic discipline to their imagination, and neither of us is precluded from success. Despite our superior power, its diminution by geography, overcommittment and politics means that they might confound us. And because they believe absolutely in the miraculous, one must credit their stated aim to defeat us in the short term by hurling our armies from the Middle East and in the long term by causing the collapse of Western civilization.

If, like his predecessors Saladin, the Mahdi of Sudan and Nasser, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes for the long shot, he may have in mind to draw out and damage any American onslaught with his thousands of surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns; by a concentrated air and naval attack to sink one or more major American warships; and to mobilize the Iraqi Shia in a general uprising, with aid from infiltrated Revolutionary Guard and conventional elements, that would threaten U.S. forces in Iraq and sever their lines of supply. This by itself would be a victory for those who see in the colors of martyrdom, but if he could knock us back and put enough of our blood in the water, the real prize might come into reach. That is: to make such a fury in the Islamic world that, as it has done before and not long ago, it would throw over caution in favor of jihad. As simply as it can be said, were Egypt to close the canal, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to lock up their airspace -- which, with their combined modern air forces, they could -- the U.S. military in Iraq and the Gulf, bereft of adequate supply, would be beleaguered and imperiled.

In trying to push the Iraqi snake by its tail, we have lost sight of the larger strategic picture, of which such events, though very unlikely, may become a part. But because the Iranian drive for deployable nuclear weapons will take years, we have a period of grace. In that time, we would do well to strengthen -- in numbers and mass as well as quality -- the means with which we fight, to reinforce the fleet train with which to supply the fighting lines, and to plan for a land route from the Mediterranean across Israel and Jordan to the Tigris and Euphrates. And even if we cannot extricate ourselves from nation-building and counterinsurgency in Iraq, we must have a plan for remounting the army there so that it can fight and maneuver as it was born to do.

It all boils down to a few simple steps that are far easier said than done, and a few assumptions that have to be made but cannot be proved. If you assume that all actors in this drama are rational, and that the Iranians really are trying to build a nuclear weapon despite their denials, then diplomacy backed by the determination to use force can work, but only if the international community as represented by the big powers are united in their opposition to the Iranians. The unwillingness of the Russians and Chinese to do anything substantive to deter the Iranians from building nuclear weapons will scuttle any diplomatic solution, because the Iranians will know that there is no credible "stick" to go along with any "carrots". If you assume the Iranians really just want nuclear power, and not nuclear weapons, then a diplomatic solution is possible, along the lines proposed by General Scowcroft. But, if the leaders of Iran are not rational, at least in the Western sense, then all bets are off. Traditional diplomacy will not work, and a military response, while it might delay their program, will probably elicit a damaging and potentially disastrous counter-stroke.

So, what to do? Assuming that the Iranians really do want to build a nuclear weapon, and diplomatic efforts to prevent that are doomed to failure, and that we cannot live with a nuclear Iran, then, in order to succeed with the military options, the following conditions should be met. First, public opinion in the U.S. must be securely behind any military action against Iran. Second, the military option must be sufficient to not only destroy the nascent nuclear capability, but also to topple the regime. Third, sufficient force must be in place to keep the lid on in Iraq and Afghanistan and, as Helprin writes, there must be sufficient capability in place to secure our forces in the Middle East and the flow of oil to the nations of the world.

So simple to say or write, not so simple to do, eh? Which is why I predict we will hear a growing chorus of voices saying that we can live with a nuclear Iran, just like we are living with a nuclear North Korea. Even though they face a greater danger, the Europeans are not willing to go to war with Iran over this issue, which is why President Chirac invoked his country's nuclear deterrent in a recent set of remarks as a response to nuclear terror. Deterrence and containment will be words we hear and read again and again over the next few months and years.

But, as I have written before, while I feel secure in predicting a passive response from the Europeans, and somewhat less secure in predicting no military action from the Bush Administration acting alone, I cannot predict with certainty that the Israelis will not mount some sort of pre-emptive attack, either with their conventional or nuclear weapons. They are the wild card. Only the Israelis face an existential threat from a regime whose leader has vowed to wipe them off the map.

As Betty Davis once said, "Fasten you seat belts, boys and girls, it's going to be a bumpy ride".

With yesterday's announcement by the President of Iran that his country has achieved uranium enrichment (albeit at a level sufficient only for nuclear power, not for a weapon), he has declared that Iran is now a member of the 'nuclear club'. That, in my opinion, is not entirely true. To my mind, membership in the club is limited to those nations that have a nuclear weapon, and the means to deliver it. Iran isn't there, yet. But it seems that the Iranian government is poised to move full speed ahead, timing this announcement to coincide with the arrival of the head of the IAEA. The Iranians know that the U.N. can't really stop them without military action, which they apparently believe is not going to happen. David Ignatius likens this to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The emerging confrontation between the United States and Iran is "the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion," argues Graham Allison, the Harvard University professor who wrote the classic study of President John F. Kennedy's 1962 showdown with the Soviet Union that narrowly averted nuclear war. If anything, that analogy understates the potential risks here.

President Bush tried to calm the war fever Monday, describing stories about military contingency plans for bombing Iran that appeared last weekend in The Post and the New Yorker as "wild speculation." But those stories did no more than flesh out the strategic options that might be necessary to back up the administration's public pledge, in its National Security Strategy, "to block the threats posed" by Iran and its nuclear program.

The administration insists that it wants diplomacy to do the preemption, even as its military planners are studying how to take out Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy should fail. Iran, meanwhile, is pursuing its own version of preemption, announcing yesterday that it has begun enriching uranium -- a crucial first step toward making a bomb. Neither side wants war -- who in his right mind would? -- but both frame choices in ways that make war increasingly likely.

"Who in his right mind would" want war? That is the crucial questions. Is President Ahmadinejad, he of the "wipe Israel off the map" remark and the belief in the return of the "Hidden Imam", in his right mind? In the end, Kennedy and Khruschev were both rational men. If Ahmadinejad is rational, then war is avoidable. If he is not, perhaps war is inevitable. Unfortunately, even if all the actors in this drama are rational, we could still get a war. Or we could avoid a limited war in the short term, only to be faced with a wider war later on.

Strategypage has a column by Austin Bay about the quiet war to eliminate the threat posed by Moqtada al Sadr in Iraq. Bay believes that the efforts to minimize al Sadr's influence one of the reasons why the process of forming a government in Iraq is moving so slowly.

Also via Instapundit, here is a column by Daniel Johnson examining the collective loss of will that is happening across Europe. France is unable to make even the most rudimentary reforms to get its economy moving, Italy just held an election which was so close that while Romano Prodi is supposedly the winner, Berlusconi won't concede defeat (a result that is similar to the recent election in Germany, in each case the incumbent party or coalition seemed incapable of getting the economy moving, but the voters were underwhelmed by the alternative, a prescription for continued political stalemate and economic stagnation). Johnson thinks it is worse than simply an unwillingness to deal with faltering economies.

What, though, do the events of April 10 mean for America? The loss of a small Italian contingent in Iraq, which was due to be withdrawn eventually, is not a major blow to American prestige. Nor does the failure of the French to reform their sclerotic economy in itself damage American interests. Even as two of the big four countries in Europe take the wrong direction, Angela Merkel's government is slowly but surely moving Germany in the right one.

But the Bush administration should be worried that Europe is in such disarray on the very issue that should be uniting the West: the threat of Islamism. Prime Minister Blair has a good grasp of both the internal and external danger, but with Mr. Berlusconi's departure he is now more isolated than ever and his days in office are numbered. Italy seems to be imitating Spain's ostrich-like posture. France is split. The Chiracs and De Villepins believe the threat would vanish of its own accord, if only the Anglo-Saxons would join in a European policy of appeasement, but Nicolas Sarcozy, the interior minister who hopes to succeed Mr. Chirac, is keen to put up more resistance.

Read the whole thing.

If you want more on the failure of Europe's political elites to come to grips with the rising tide of Islamism, read Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept". With falling birthrates, a growing community of unintegrated and unassimilated Muslim immigrants, and an inability to reach any type of consensus on how to reform their economies, the future of Europe as we know it is looking darker every day.

As millions of immigrants take to the streets, Democrats sense an opportunity. With the President's poll numbers still abysmal, and the GOP Congress sinking as well, they may be right, but not for the reasons they think. The GOP is collapsing on the immigration issue because it is unable to present a united front. A majority of Americans want illegal immigration stopped, but there is significant disagreement about what to do with the 11 million illegals already here. If the GOP would simply get behind a tougher border security bill, to include a massive increase in the size of the Border Patrol, investment in new technologies and, yes, even a fence, they would probably be on firm political ground. By adding a provision that would turn the 11 million illegals into felons, the GOP stoked the fire that caused the big protests. It doesn't help that the President, Senator McCain and others want a 'guest worker' program, which sounds too much like amnesty to some, and it sounds like an end-around to our tradition of turning immigrants into citizens to others. Another colossal failure by the President and the GOP leadership, which will almost certainly lead to a debacle in November.

While European diplomats dither about Iran, promising toothless sanctions while almost pleading with Teheran to drop its nuclear program, Mark Steyn says only the utter decapitation of this regime will do, since they have been at war with us since 1979. Jimmy Carter didn't have the cajones to do anything about them at that time (the invasion of our embassy should have been treated as an invasion of our homeland, as an act of war), and subsequent administrations were unwilling to anything substantive, either. They have all kicked the can down the road, and the current administration looks to be taking the same course. Their descendants will curse them and their memory.

Is the media distorting the leak story? Jack Kelly thinks so, and he, as well as others like Christopher Hitchens, continue to point out that the evidence indicates Iraq was looking into acquiring "yellowcake" from Niger and, oh, by the way, Wilson was chosen to go there because his wife recommended him.

Mediocrity triumphs in France, according to Charles Krauthammer, as the politicians cave in to the demonstrators and move to repeal their new jobs law. Meanwhile, the Muslim underclass simmers. Can a real revolution be that far off?

Bill Crawford has more good news coming out of Iraq.

Claude Salhani, on the other hand, thinks a conference scheduled to convene in Jordan may be Iraq's last chance to reach some sort of compromise that would allow them to put a government together and end the violence.

This article, from the New York Times, says that efforts to bring more democracy to the Arab world are faltering. It appears more and more leaders in that region are hoping that they can wait out the Bush administration, which will eventually be replaced, they think, by an administration that will return to America's historic policy of valuing stability over democracy.

The National Review has put an article on their website from 2001 questioning the veracity of Seymour Hersh in his reporting. They say it is helpful to remember Hersh's past "mistakes" when evaluating his current reporting.

As larger pro-immigration rallies continue across the U.S. (with an effort being made by organizers to get the participants to leave their Mexican flags at home and, instead, bring U.S. flags to the demonstrations), some House members are warning their Senate colleagues not to "vote scared" on immigration reform. The problem facing members of Congress is that, while the demonstrations showcase the millions who want to stay in America and work (which is true), it doesn't reflect the silent majority of Americans disturbed by massive illegal immigration (for a variety of reasons). Combined with pressure from their most powerful interest groups, you get the current impasse, which I don't think will be broken before the elections.

John Fund thinks the GOP is looking more and more like the Democrats did in 1994 just before they were swept out of power. I think he is right.

"Bush is Planning Nuclear Strikes on Iran's Secret Sites" is the headline coming out of the Hersh story I linked to yesterday. That particular headline is from a Telegraph story in the U.K., via the Drudge Report, but apparently there are similar headlines from the AP and others. If you read the whole Hersh story, as I did, you'll recognize the sensational aspect of the headline and the reporting. The nuclear discussion is only a small part of the article and one that I would expect would be part of a comprehensive exercise in war-planning. The military has planned on the use of nuclear weapons many times under many different scenarios. Each time they, or their civilian leaders, have opted to eschew their use. That this discussion is happening again is not surprising. If they eschew their use once again, it will also not be surprising.

Ralph Peters wonders in today's New York Post if the Iranians really want war.

IN recent weeks, Tehran has anxiously publicized its tests of surface-to-surface missiles, of air-to-ground missiles and even of torpedoes. The intended point is that, if the shooting starts, Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers - disrupting the global economy - while striking any other target between Israel and Afghanistan.

The crucial question is whether the Iranians are still playing at brinksmanship, hoping to spook us into passivity as they build nuclear weapons, or if they've already convinced themselves that a conflict with the United States is inevitable.

Given the closed nature of Iran's ruling clique, it's impossible to know. The most-probable situation is that differing factions within the leadership are at different stages of willingness for war, with some ready to fight and others fearful. Cooler heads may prevail - but "cooler heads" is a relative term in Tehran.

Have the inner-circle Iranian leaders replicated yesteryear's decision-making process of Osama bin Laden and his deputies in their Afghan camps - a hothouse atmosphere in which limited evidence was processed selectively and mutual-enablers convinced each other that a few attacks on American landmarks would drive Washington into a global retreat?

Have the Iranians failed to understand the real implications of 9/11? Do they believe that sinking a few oil tankers or even a U.S. Navy ship or two would drive us from the region? Has flawed, impassioned faith led to faulty geo-strategic calculations?

The most worrisome possibility is that they may have convinced themselves they can win.

Read the whole thing. Peters concludes that if the Iranians do opt for war, they should, as General Sherman once said, be given "a dose of it".

On the domestic front, this article in the Boston Globe lays out the political problem facing the GOP, which is that there appears to be a building wave for the Democrats which could sweep the Republicans out of power in Congress in November.

Meanwhile, George Will points out how John McCain is positioning himself to win the GOP nomination in '08, which is making him far less of a media darling. Helen Thomas reaches the right conclusion, which is that if you elect McCain, you'll get four more years of Bush. Sounds good to me (at least when it comes to waging this war on to victory).

Seymour Hersh has an interesting article in the New Yorker about the planning and internal government arguments going on about a potential air campaign against Iran to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon. Hersh is provocative, and he is no friend of the current administration, but he has good sources and I find the article to be a credible explanation of what is probably happening inside the government as officials debate what should be done about Iran.

Victor Davis Hanson also speculates about the potential for confrontation with Iran.

Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, “Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live.” The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.

So far the Iranian president has posed as someone 90-percent crazy and 10-percent sane, hoping we would fear his overt madness and delicately appeal to his small reservoirs of reason. But he should understand that if his Western enemies appear 90-percent children of the Enlightenment, they are still effused with vestigial traces of the emotional and unpredictable. And military history shows that the irrational 10 percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer.

So, please, Mr. Ahmadinejad, cool the rhetoric fast — before you needlessly push once reasonable people against the wall, and thus talk your way into a sky full of very angry and righteous jets.

Hanson, a historian, still believes the peoples of the West have the ability to regress into the butchers who killed by the millions in the 20th Century (and millions more in the 19th, 18th, 17th, 16th, and so on), they just need to be pushed into a corner before those old instincts re-assert themselves. I'm not so sure about the Europeans but, remembering the attitudes I heard after 9/11, I think the American people are still ready, willing and able to visit great destruction on anyone perceived as a threat to our lives, property and liberty. After all, our grandparents had no problem with Curtis LeMay's firebombing of Japanese cities as a just payback for Pearl Harbor.

That, of course, is the main point Hanson is getting at. We need to feel our backs against the wall before we strike out with all our power. That isn't the case with Iraq, and it is not yet the case with Iran. The problem for Bush is that the political will to make war against Iran won't exist until the Iranians get the bomb and they (or their surrogates) use it against us. Bush doesn't want to wait until an American city lies in radioactive ruins (or, for that matter, an Israeli or European city). He wants to use our power to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb. Politically, this may not be possible. If he does it anyway, he may consign the GOP to minority status for a generation.

Charles Krauthammer has the right answer to the immigration question.

This is no time for mushy compromise. A solution requires two acts of national will: the ugly act of putting up a fence and the supremely generous act of absorbing as ultimately full citizens those who broke our laws to come to America.

This is not a compromise meant to appease both sides without achieving anything. It is not some piece of hybrid legislation that arbitrarily divides illegals into those with five-year-old "roots" in America and those without, or some such mischief-making nonsense.

This is full amnesty (earned with back taxes and learning English and the like) with full border control. If we do it right, not only will we solve the problem, we will get it done as one nation.

He is right. Read the whole thing. Perhaps, after they initially fail (which is what I expect to happen), the Congress can reach a compromise that builds a fence and then legalizes the 11 million. This will take some time, of course, but it is still possible.

I have written many times on this site that I believe the American people do not have the patience for long wars with hard to describe victory conditions. Twenty-two years ago I wrote my college thesis on the declining public and, therefore, congressional support for the limited wars in Korea and Vietnam. Once a traditional, easy to describe victory seemed no longer possible, the public and Congress lost the stomach for continuing the war. James Thayer is thinking along similar lines in his recent piece in the Weekly Standard.

IN ITS 230 YEARS of history the United States has engaged in only relatively quick military engagements. The last two and a third centuries have seen a world ravaged by constant, brutal hostilities, yet American military forces are in-and-out in three to four years.

There are two exceptions, of course. Precisely when the Vietnam War began for Americans is hard to say, but March 1965--when 3,500 Marines, the first combat troops--landed in South Vietnam (there were already about 20,000 U.S. advisers in the country)--is as good a moment to pinpoint as any. America's involvement ended in January 1973 when President Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action. United States troops were then quickly withdrawn. So the American portion of the war lasted about eight years. The distinction between Vietnam and the other wars listed above is that the United States lost the Vietnam War.

The other exception is the War of Independence. The first battles--Lexington and Concord--occurred in April 1775, and the war ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Yet even this length of time--eight years--is short, in terms of war.

...IT ONLY TAKES A GLANCE at history to know that nothing intrinsic in war limits conflicts to the American experience. Due to the quirks of history or to the skill of America's military or to luck--presuming anything regarding war can be called luck--the United States has fought short wars.

...And Iran's new foreign minister, Manuchehr Motakki, says, "We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies." Meaning, he's confident America will quit the war on terror soon. It's been four and a half years now since war was thrust on us, and America's patience is quickly thinning.

The United States cannot lose the war on terror militarily. Our soldiers are too good, too well-equipped, and too ferocious. But we can still lose the war, if the American people--antsy and staring at our calendars, the wrong lesson of our military history heavy upon us--order them home.

Read the whole thing to understand the historical perspective that he uses to justify his contention that America's wars are usually short and, thus, America's patience for war is limited.

THE LAST HELICOPTER

The Belmont Club introduces us to the concept of "The Last Helicopter", via the excellent writer and Middle East analyst Amir Taheri.

...the enemy, unable to defeat the US military in the field, has embarked on a strategy Amir Taheri called "Waiting Out Bush". Or in Belmont Clubese, the enemy having lost the military war now hopes to win the political war. Taheri says that many Arab capitals are simply waiting for a new administration to ride to their rescue. The trick is simply to "wait out Bush".

"Hassan Abbasi has a dream--a helicopter doing an arabesque in cloudy skies to avoid being shot at from the ground. On board are the last of the "fleeing Americans," forced out of the Dar al-Islam (The Abode of Islam) by "the Army of Muhammad." Presented by his friends as "The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," Mr. Abbasi is "professor of strategy" at the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard Corps University and, according to Tehran sources, the principal foreign policy voice in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new radical administration.

To hear Mr. Abbasi tell it the entire recent history of the U.S. could be narrated with the help of the image of "the last helicopter." ... According to this theory, President George W. Bush is an "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no helicopter as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand.

It is not only in Tehran and Damascus that the game of "waiting Bush out" is played with determination. In recent visits to several regional capitals, this writer was struck by the popularity of this new game from Islamabad to Rabat. The general assumption is that Mr. Bush's plan to help democratize the heartland of Islam is fading under an avalanche of partisan attacks inside the U.S. The effect of this assumption can be witnessed everywhere."

As I have written repeatedly on this blog, we can only be defeated HERE, not over there. If the American people elect a Congress and, later, a President who repudiates the Bush Doctrine, then the Islamists will win a great victory, which will lead to an even bloodier, more destructive war later down the road.

Ted Kennedy has written a new book in which he condemns the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. The Liberal Lion also lays out his case for higher taxes on the rich (himself included, I would hope), universal health care, etc., etc. I'm all in favor of politicians getting their views before the public as clearly as possible, so I applaud the senior Senator from Massachusetts for his efforts. I hope many Americans read the book (or excerpts) and think about which committees he will chair if the Democrats take back the Senate this November.

Jeff Jacoby chastises the chattering classes for making hasty judgments about Jill Carroll upon her release from captivity. Although I didn't write about it here, and therefore I can't prove it, I was very skeptical about her initial remarks. I wasn't going to believe a word of it until she was safely in the arms of the U.S. Armed Forces. The earlier video of her crying and pleading for her life was just to real for me to buy that it was an acting job, therefore, the last video and interview essentially taking the side of her kidnappers just didn't strike me as being genuine. I was right, but my doubts are the reason I refrained from commenting on her case immediately after her release, which is the essence of Jacoby's article...think before you speak (or write).

Eliot Cohen, in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, says the recent academic paper purporting to show the undue and destructive influence of the so-called "Jewish Lobby" is an example of anti-Semitic bigotry. I haven't read the paper, but if the only people praising it are David Duke and a bunch of Islamists overseas, my guess is that it is pretty suspect. At some point, if I can find it online, I'll get around to reading it and judge for myself.

Robert Samuelson, in another op-ed piece in the Post, lays out a solution to the immigration impasse in Congress. He doesn't think they will adopt it, and I don't either. My guess is that nothing substantive will be done before the elections.

The Belmont Club continues to analyze the political situation in Iraq, with a critique of the pessimistic appraisals made by such Conservative luminaries as George Will and William F. Buckley. I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Let's wait and see if the political leaders of Iraq's various factions really want to cooperate, or consign their country to the fate of Afghanistan or Lebanon, except on a much larger and deadlier scale. I don't think they want to do that, and every time their is an outbreak of large-scale violence they stare into the abyss, which is a great incentive for them to set aside their differences and come to some sort of compromise.

IMPERIAL ISLAM

One of the great problems we face in the prosecution of the war (if you believe, as I do, that we are at war) is the fact that we, for the most part, are almost entirely ignorant about our enemies. That is why articles like this one are so valuable. Professor Efraim Karsh, head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, informs readers of Opinion Journal about the imperial ambitions of historic Islam.

"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, 'There is no god but Allah.' " With these farewell words, the prophet Muhammad summed up the international vision of the faith he brought to the world. As a universal religion, Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or subject communities. In order to achieve this goal, it is incumbent on all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising "struggle in the path of Allah," or jihad. As the 14th-century historian and philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, "In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."

Karsh recites some of the history of Islam and concludes that today's radicals, as well as their numerous sympathizers, are guided by that history.

As we have seen, however, Islamic history has been anything but reactive. From Muhammad to the Ottomans, the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of an often astonishing imperial aggressiveness and, no less important, of never quiescent imperial dreams. Even as these dreams have repeatedly frustrated any possibility for the peaceful social and political development of the Arab-Muslim world, they have given rise to no less repeated fantasies of revenge and restoration and to murderous efforts to transform fantasy into fact. If, today, America is reviled in the Muslim world, it is not because of its specific policies but because, as the preeminent world power, it blocks the final realization of this same age-old dream of regaining, in Zawahiri's words, the "lost glory" of the caliphate.

Nor is the vision confined to a tiny extremist fringe. This we saw in the overwhelming support for the 9/11 attacks throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, in the admiring evocations of bin Laden's murderous acts during the crisis over the Danish cartoons, and in such recent findings as the poll indicating significant reservoirs of sympathy among Muslims in Britain for the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July. In the historical imagination of many Muslims and Arabs, bin Laden represents nothing short of the new incarnation of Saladin, defeater of the Crusaders and conqueror of Jerusalem. In this sense, the House of Islam's war for world mastery is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest that is far from over.

To the contrary, now that this war has itself met with a so far determined counterattack by the United States and others, and with a Western intervention in the heart of the House of Islam, it has escalated to a new stage of virulence. In many Middle Eastern countries, Islamist movements, and movements appealing to traditionalist Muslims, are now jockeying fiercely for positions of power, both against the Americans and against secular parties. For the Islamists, the stakes are very high indeed, for if the political elites of the Middle East and elsewhere were ever to reconcile themselves to the reality that there is no Arab or Islamic "nation," but only modern Muslim states with destinies and domestic responsibilities of their own, the imperialist dream would die.

Read the whole article. I look forward to purchasing his new book "Islamic Imperialism: A History". It is vital to understand the historical context that created bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi and the others and why their message resonates so powerfully among ordinary Muslims. To say that it is simply about Western oppression and Israeli aggression, while those things are part of the total equation, is to miss the most important aspect of the rise of these radicals. If the West were to retreat from the Middle East and Israel annihilated, the imperial dreams of the radicals would still not be sated, which is why they must be defeated so that Islam can evolve into a true religion of tolerance, willing to live side-by-sides as equals with other beliefs.

Bill Crawford has another edition of his good news from Iraq feature, which is a valuable counterweight to the negative coverage generated by the MSM. Strategypage explains the reason why the MSM coverage is so negative...

What you see in the Iraq news, is not what you get. The news business demands startling headlines, to attract eyeballs. It's business, as the eyeballs are rented to advertisers to pay for it all.

He is absolutely right. Certainly, what is being reported by the MSM is usually true. The bombs, the executions, the kidnappings, the demonstrations, the political bickering, all true, but not the whole story, which is why I like the Crawford coverage and which is why the average consumer of the news here in the U.S. may not be able to spot the real trends, as Strategypage does.

After three years, the Sunni Arabs, who long dominated Iraq, most recently under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, are giving up. It took so long because of a quirk in Arab culture, one that encourages the support of lost causes. The term "cut your losses and move on" is not as popular in the Arab world as it is in the West. But even the slow learners in the Sunni Arab community had to finally confront some unfavorable trends. Chief among these was;

The Kurds and Shia Arabs have formed a national police force and army that is far more powerful than anything the Sunni Arab community can muster. Over the last year, Sunni Arabs realized that the police and army were in control of more and more Sunni Arab towns. This was a trend that could not be ignored. Added to that was the number of Kurds and Shia Arabs who had lost kin to Sunni Arab terror over the last three decades. Many of these people want revenge, and they all have guns. Many, especially those that belong to the police, or militias, are taking their revenge. The Sunni Arabs want protection, for they cannot muster enough guns to defend themselves. Now the Sunni Arabs want the Americans to stay, at least until there's some assurance that the Kurd and Shia Arab vengeance attacks have died down.

The alliance with al Qaeda was a disaster. These Islamic terrorists were obsessed with causing a civil war in Iraq, and they insisted on doing this by killing lots of Shia Arabs. The Sunni Arabs didn't want to kill lots of Shia Arabs, they wanted to rule them all once more. But that raised another contentious issue. While some Sunni Arabs were in favor of an Islam Republic, which al Qaeda insisted on, most Sunni Arabs wanted a more secular Sunni Arab dominated government. This dispute was never resolved, as the split between al Qaeda and the Sunni Arab community widened. At the moment, al Qaeda is not welcome in most Sunni Arab areas. That's "come near this place and we'll kill you" not welcome. This after al Qaeda tried to terrorize the Sunni Arab tribal leaders into compliance. Killing Sunni Arab tribal chiefs didn't work.

Read the whole thing.

Michael Barone explains another reason why the MSM doesn't always give us the whole story.

Surveys galore have shown that somewhere around 90 percent of the writers, editors and other personnel in the news media are Democrats and only about 10 percent are Republicans. We depend on the news media for information about government and politics, foreign affairs and war, public policy and demographic trends -- for a picture of the world around us. But the news comes from people 90 percent of whom are on one side of the political divide. Doesn't sound like an ideal situation.

Of course, a lot of people in the news business say it doesn't make any difference. I remember a conversation I had with a broadcast news executive many years ago.

"Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no," he said. "Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news."

"So what you're saying," I said, "is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans."

He quickly replied, "No, then it would be biased."

I have been closely acquainted with newsroom cultures for more than 30 years, and I recognize the attitude. Only liberals can see the world clearly. Conservatives are prevented by their warped and ungenerous views from recognizing the world as it is.

Read the whole thing.

Iran has tested a new torpedo that, if it works as well as the Iranians say it does, will make things difficult in the Strait of Hormuz for the U.S. Navy should push come to shove over the nuclear issue.

Finally, on a totally unrelated topic, here is an article about climate change from 1975 which predicted a cooling world, and disaster. Some very smart people got it completely wrong back then, could they be getting it completely wrong again today?

DEALING WITH IRAN, OR NOT

The Telegraph of the U.K. is reporting that British defense officials are going to meet to discuss contingency plans in case the U.S. attacks Iran. While their sources say that such an attack is not thought to be imminent, some believe it is almost inevitable. This is a very valid opinion, given the hoplessly inept response so far of the U.N., which is drawing fire from the editors of the Washington Post, and even more harshly from David Warren.

This has been another week of infamy at the United Nations -- they have strung quite a few hundred of them together -- and while one can’t refer to a “low point” in an institution that is morally bottomless, the failure to do anything even mildly credible about the nuclear threat from Iran is at least worthy of note.

Three weeks after the urgent matter of Iran’s non-compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was referred to it, the Security Council issued a non-binding presidential statement. The members could not even draft a Security Council resolution. They could not bring themselves to repeat the grave charges tabled by their own International Atomic Energy Agency, nor formally acknowledge that the IAEA had presented the case to them for action. They found no fault in the Iranian president’s repeated promises to “wipe-out Israel”, or in his public musings about the Koranic apocalypse being at hand.

Instead, they expressed “serious concerns”, about e.g. "Iran’s decision to resume enrichment-related activities”, and called upon that country to “take steps ... which are essential to build confidence”. After which, Iran replied with a huge public raspberry.

...I shall never have the space in these short columns to begin pealing through the U.N.’s layers of perfidy and shame. Instead, I will refer my reader to the current (April) number of the monthly Commentary magazine, where the field is staked by Claudia Rosett, a journalist who has been covering this U.N. beat remorselessly for the Wall Street Journal and New York Sun.

But apart from all that, we must remember that even if the U.N. were honestly managed, and staffed by sages and saints, it would not be the appropriate forum for dealing with threats from such rogue states as Iran. For success in such a confrontation requires discipline, nerve, and tactical skill, under bold leadership. This can never be provided by a club that consists of nearly 200 members with conflicting interests, or by a Security Council in which several veto-wielding powers devote their joyful energies to tripping each other up. The U.N. can be a forum for formal and informal diplomatic exchanges; a “clearing house” of some sort; but it cannot offer transnational solutions to real world crises, because there are no such solutions to be had.

Sovereignty exists at the national level, where governments armed with police and soldiers tend national interests and cultivate the means to enforce their interpretation of a national will. This is the unchanging reality through the foreseeable future. Forget about “speaking truth to power”. The only way to say boo to Iran is with a bigger power. Read: the USA and a "coalition of the willing".

Amen.

Of course, if the U.S. does strike Iran, we can expect the Iranians to respond with terrorism.

Whether we like it or not, international diplomacy can never be a substitute for military power when facing unreasonable persons who are in charge of governments. Just as the League of Nations was impotent when faced with Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese militarists, so the U.N. is impotent when faced with either brutal, fascistic leaders or fanatical ideologues. As long as Iran (and North Korea, for that matter) is run by brutal tyrants who are used to getting their way through the use of fear and intimidation, they can never be trusted to comply with agreements or to set aside their ambitions. International diplomacy did not defeat the Fascists, and it did not defeat the Communists, and it will not defeat the Jihadists.

BAGHDAD IS THE KEY

Bill Roggio has an excellent post about what he calls the battle for Baghdad.

Baghdad has yet again become the center of gravity for the insurgency. For three years the insurgency attempted to establish its dominance in outlying cities such as Fallujah, Mosul, Tal Afar, Ramadi, Husaybah, Haditha, Samarra, Balad, Taji, Najaf and elsewhere, and failed. Baghdad is now the center of power, the seat and symbol of legitimacy of the new Iraqi government. The all important Iraqi ministries of Interior, Defense, and Oil reside in Baghdad, as does the Coalition command headquarters and the “International Zone”. The media is concentrated in the city as they lack the resources to operate outside the capitol, and are required to maintain a Baghdad office.

Major General Rick Lynch, the spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, aptly explains why the insurgency is focusing on the city, and reports on Coalition and Iraqi efforts to reduce the violence in the capitol under Operation Scales of Justice during his March 30 briefing.

Let's talk about Baghdad -- a very, very sensitive time as the Iraqis try to form this national unity government, and it's the time where the enemy is saying, "They have vulnerability. Maybe, just maybe, I can derail the democratic process. I couldn't do it in 2005. I couldn't stop the January elections. I couldn't stop them drafting or ratifying a constitution in October, and I couldn't stop the December elections. So maybe, just maybe, during this period of time, I can inflame sectarian violence and delay the formation of a national unity government."

...the level of violence, or more accurately the perception of the level of violence in Baghdad, is rising. The constant discovery of bodies tortured, maimed, executed and dumped on the roadside is eroding the faith of the residents of Baghdad in the government's ability to provide for their security. Government security forces, particularly the police, are viewed with distrust in some neighborhoods. Militias are both revered and feared. This can be seen in the reporting of Iraqi bloggers Omar and Mohammed, Zayed, Ali, Hammorabi, and Riverbend (despite opinions of each blogger, they essentially paint the same picture of the situation in Baghdad). The media, being concentrated in Baghdad, reports this, and the perception is the security situation in Baghdad represents the security situation in the rest of Iraq.

This couldn't be farther from the truth. Last evening I spoke to Gunnery Sergeant Charles Strong, from Weapons Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines. His unit just returned from Iraq, and fought in some of the fiercest battles in western Anbar province over the past year. He explained the Al Qaim region is making remarkable progress, and the problems are more of the nature in getting the disparate Sunni tribes to work together. His story isn't uncommon. Much of Iraq is going through a similar transition, or is relatively peaceful. But none of this matters as long as the insurgency focuses on Baghdad.

That is correct. "None of this matters as long as the insurgency focuses on Baghdad". The battle for Baghdad and, by extension, the battle for Iraq will not be won or lost in Baghdad or in Iraq. The battle will be won or lost here in America. If the President, under the pressure of falling poll numbers, withdraws our troops prematurely, then the battle will be lost. If he keeps levels sufficient to keep Iraq from falling into a civil war, and prevents the Al Qaeda terrorists or Saddamists from taking over, and deters surrounding powers from invading Iraq (like the Syrians did in Lebanon), then the battle can still be won. As Roggio points out, the insurgents now understand that the only way to win is to defeat America politically, and the way to do that is to create carnage and mayhem specifically for the American television audience. I expect the violence to continue, but I hope that U.S. forces can help the Iraqis control the situation enough to get their new government in place.