Nasty Little Man

Fool me, you can't get fooled again

For fun: "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you...Fool me, you can't get fooled again."

But seriously...

The sub-headline of Charles Krauthammer's back page essay in last week's Time was this: What's at stake in the dispute over Iranian nukes? Ultimately, human survival

Here we go.

The piece itself includes this:

Iran is the test case. It is the most dangerous political entity on the planet, and yet the world response has been catastrophically slow and reluctant. Years of knowingly useless negotiations, followed by hesitant international resolutions, have brought us to only the most tentative of steps--referral to a Security Council that lacks unity and resolve. Iran knows this and therefore defiantly and openly resumes its headlong march to nuclear status. If we fail to prevent an Iranian regime run by apocalyptic fanatics from going nuclear, we will have reached a point of no return. It is not just that Iran might be the source of a great conflagration but that we will have demonstrated to the world that for those similarly inclined there is no serious impediment.

Don't get me wrong. I'm worried about Iran, for the reasons that Krauthammer outlines and for reasons detailed in an article on Iran's pursuit of nukes in the same issue.

But here is where the Iraq debacle is so devastating. Why should I follow the lead of opinion pushers like Krauthammer and the politicians who think like them on Iran when they did us so wrong on Iraq? Making matters worse, if Iran really is a problem, we are militarily handicapped because of what is happening in Iraq.

To borrow Newt's suggestion for the Dems' '06 campaign slogan: Had enough?

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 8:43 PM