And pieces like that are handy for purposes of monitoring the general, overall slide into gloomy-hawkishness about the MME (i.e. Muslim Middle East).
A couple of years ago I–which is to say, a fringe, cranky, not-very-respectable commentator–came under withering fire from all over the place for saying that I had quite enjoyed the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88.
Today a respectable big-newspaper commentator like Ralph Peters can say this: “If the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries.”
Stick around; soon the president himself will be making positive remarks about MME inhabitants mass-slaughtering each other.