My own dark thoughts, voiced by a reader:

“Dear John—In regards to those who are saying that W followed through in

Iraq, that is true, but I fear that in this crisis we might be looking at

the power of ‘once burned, twice shy.’ Iran is a vastly much tougher nut to

crack than Iraq, and everyone from the squishy middle to mad left has

already made that struggle so difficult to carry on that I can imagine that

he is hesitant, a hesitancy compounded by what appears to be a real

paralysis in the intel community and at defense. The American people itself

is wobbly enough that I’m not sure we could handle the consequences of a

major military effort to take out Iran’s WMD development program. The degree

to which we are still playing at war (that a candidate as transparently

phony as Kerry on defense issues could garner 48% of the vote, the ongoing

unseriousness of almost every democrat and all too many republicans, the

politics of intel reform and our unwillingness to profile at airports, etc.)

suggests to me that we are going to need to pay again for some very

expensive tuition at the school of hard knocks. I like W, and believe he

wants to do the right thing, but I think he feels burned by Iraq and is

uncertain about how to proceed in Iran. And all the mullahs in Iran need is

that uncertainty and delay – once they have nukes then they have a place at

the table in international affairs that can never be taken away from them.

And it is an even more commanding place than North Korea, because Iran’s

nukes don’t need to hit the US, Israel or Europe to inflict massive

destruction. Just a couple of well-placed nukes on the Saudi and Iraqi oil

fields to irradiate the oil there will shatter the world’s economy. Oil at

$200-$300/barrel would usher in a much more Hobbesian world, and an Iran

with nukes can do that.

“But in a world where the mullahs have such power we will have the

satisfaction of knowing that we maintained some scraps of ‘respectability.’”

Yes: as the mushroom clouds rise above Chicago and Dallas, we shall at

least be able to console ourselves with the fact that we didn’t do anything

to tick off Chirac and Schroeder.