Buddy Michale Lotus blogs this segment from Bush's State of the Union last night (seems I am always flying somewhere during these big speeches!):

"Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own, because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens. Yet liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity. The same is true of Iran, a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people. The regime in that country sponsors terrorists in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon – and that must come to an end. The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions – and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian
regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats. And tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our Nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran."

This strikes me as a big signal in a big speech: We'll push your leadership on the nukes, and you Iranians do what you can on the inside. To me, that's taking regime change by force off the table for now, and I think that's Bush listening to his military and understanding that we don't have the ability, with the current tie-down of assets elsewhere, to make that a credible threat.

I am thinking more and more that Bush is done, major intervention-wise, for his presidency. Question now is whether Iran or North Korea dominate a 2008 election debate. The "winner" is probably teed-up next for some sort of big push leading toward military action. I would prefer that target to be North Korea, and not Iran, for a lot of reasons I've already stated in this blog.

If I were advising Democrats or Republicans, I would say: pick North Korea and kill two birds with one stone (bad Kim and win over China in strategic alliance in the process). On Iran, I think you risk creating two monsters (Iran you can't manage and China turned against you in the region). I would take the win-win over the lose-lose. And hopefully smart candidates, thinking about how they would actually rule and not just how they'd get elected, would see things similarly.

Read Lotus on this on Chicago Boyz: http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/003898.html. As always, he is smart as a whip. His version of Fourth-Generation War I would actually wage.

UPDATE: Lotus continues in this vein.