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.