Mario, please.

A year ago, when the grand engagement strategy was first forged and, without any demands about the cessation of terror mongering, we offered the mullahs everything including the kitchen sink to suspend—not abandon but suspend—their nuclear program, among the goodies included was civil aviation assistance. When the Iranians predictably told us to go pound sand … we gave them the aviation assistance anyway. The Iranians responded to the gesture by stepping up their centrifuge production. We reacted by agreeing to direct negotiations. They responded, the day after the negotiation session, by indicting three Americans on trumped up capital crimes.

Is there some complex web of a geopolitical strategy that that fits into? I mean, is Gaddis’s idea that you let the Iranians train and harbor al Qaeda for the last fourteen years, let them kill 19 U.S. airmen at Khobar Towers eleven years ago, let them facilitate the travel of the 9/11 hijackers seven years ago, and let them kill Americans with abandon for the last four years because we wouldn’t want to react rashly and concede them the initiative? Because we’re waiting for the Moons of Saturn to align just so for that cosmic moment of our choosing? On that theory, I imagine Lady Thatcher will be getting to that Falklands mess any day now.

I get Foreign Affairs, too, but mainly for the pictures. As one of those un-nuanced, benighted Neanderthals who actually thought the Bush Doctrine meant what it said, I think I’m stickin’ with “Kick Me Again!”