Brace Yourself For War With Iran

We shouldn't have pursued appeasement over the last two years, letting them get the bomb.

We're in the wrong country. We should have attacked Iran.

We can't trust the Russians or Chinese to do the responsible thing.

Recriminations about Iran are plentiful, but they miss the point Gerald Baker makes forcefully in today's London Times:

All [the recriminations are] true. All [are] fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

If Iran gets safely and unmolested to nuclear status, it will be a threshold moment in the history of the world, up there with the Bolshevik Revolution and the coming of Hitler.

Besides the Ultimate Jew-Bashing that Iran hopes will follow its acquisition of nuclear weaponry, there's the utter destabilization of the region that will follow. Arabs (and non-Arab Muslims) are much better at killing themselves than they are at killing us, so Baker foresees a nuclear Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Depressingly, he's probably right.

He's probably also right about a recession, increased terrorism, and the greater need for domestic spying. But what he's most right about is this:

Because in the end, preparation for war, by which I mean not military feasibility planning, or political and diplomatic manoeuvres but a psychological readiness, a personal willingness on all our parts to bear the terrible burdens that it will surely impose, may be our last real chance to ensure that we can avoid one.

The Brits can't count on George Galloway at a time like this, and we can't count on John Kerry. Dealing with Iran will require eyes that are wide open and a will that is steeled and ready to accept pain, quite possibly a lot of pain, in the quest for peace.

h/t RCP