Confronting Iran may doom Iraq goals

ARTICLE: To Counter Iran’s Role in Iraq, Bush Moves Beyond Diplomacy, By HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI, New York Times, January 11, 2007

This is where I part ways with Bush dramatically (Iran), as I argue in my column this weekend. Adding the Iranian fight on top of the Iraqi effort right now comes close to dooming our effort.

Iran will simply intensify the fight in Iraq and conflate it elsewhere, like it did in Lebanon last August. We'll feel more and worse short-term pain.

I mean, that's not even being clever on Iran's part, that's just not having their heads up their asses.

I agree you work Iran in the future if no improvement there, but why telegraph your punch endlessly with axis of evil back then and stuff like this now? How can this administration act with such secrecy and duplicitousness at home and remain so godawfully transparent to our enemies abroad? There's stupid in your living room and then there's stupid on my front lawn: I don't have to do anything about the former, but the latter will earn a response. I thought that response came with the November election, but Bush and Cheney are effectively blowing that popular will off, and you know what? This time those "dumb average Americans" are outperforming the Vulcans in more ways than I care to calculate.

If Bush made the Big Bang seem sequential (like the Balkans unfolded), then the American people would be able to come along. But if he makes it seem additive, as I arguedin PNM, he loses them, especially when Iran will forcefully pursue an asymmetrical strategy designed to prevent any effective U.S. response down the road.

Ahmadinejad did well by Bush's speech last night. Our troops will suffer as a result in Iraq.

This is Bush's biggest problem in grand strategic thinking: too expansive in defining enemies (especially over time, thus telegraphing punches way in advance), and way too unimaginative in defining friends.

The incurious president costs us a whole lot over the long haul of this Long War--i.e., he just doesn't seem to know enough about the world to overrule the neocon-in-chief, Cheney.

Comments

[TM Lutas]

Tom, do you have any information on how financially vulnerable Iran is? Bush's moves make sense if Iran is Humpty Dumpty and a little financial pressure (in the form of increased defense spending and spreading money around to Hamas and Hezbollah) is sufficient to push that country over the edge. We don't have to go to war in Iran then. They'll sue for peace without a shot being fired.