The Case for Bombing Iran

Putin was a principal participant of the hidden aspects of World War III along with the first President Bush. I suspect Putin has a substantial investment in Iran and is also immersed in the hidden aspects of World War IV. When we bomb Iran, our World War III foe may join World War IV overtly. This will present an entirely new dimension of danger to World War IV. I pray the current President Bush administration is a much more ardent supporter of Israel than the previous President Bush administration.

In the entirety of Mr. Podhoretz' article I find only one slight emphasis to which I believe a rejoinder is urgent: The continual reference to Ahmadinejad, his elevation to a de facto focus of our concerns, is misplaced; he is not the problem: as the quotes of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Rafsanjani (and those of many other Iranian functionaries which could be adduced) show, it is the ideology of a regime that ought to prompt our action; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is only a useful mouthpiece.

I fear the day that the regime or some other force should remove him. Then we in the West (which is where at least half the problem lies) would hear from our more benighted (and other more seditious) fellows how there was no longer any threat to address. It is the same (understandable, given who we are) emphasis on personalities that has squandered opportunities to advance the cause of freedom so often in the past--in the USSR, in China. These are regimes, political corporations; the individual players are of secondary importance.

It behooves thoughtful Americans to pay attention to this bellicose neoconservative essay, although it seems to draw heavily on loaded political images such as Hitler and Chamberlain. There is value in defining geo-politics as some kind of giant chess game, but we must guard against viewing the currents of history in terms of seductive compartments such as World War I,II,III, and IV. While Mr. Podhoretz might pray for air strikes against Iran, others pray that his views remain in the margin, as too dangerous for a civilized world.

Why bomb Iran when a relatively innocuous electromagnetic pulse would shut down Iran's entire nuclear program for years, as well as everything dependent on the controlled flow of electrons? Repeat as necessary.