The state of affairs we must blame primarily in the French for their treachery; the French and the Germans for their failure to support the initial invasion of Iraq; the misjudgments of the Bush administration in seeking to justify the war primarily on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, the mismanagement of the occupation; the perfidy of American Democrats and leftists.
Of course there were other causes but we are where we are. And we are left were we were at the time that no weapons of mass destruction were found: without any allies upon which we can count and even isolated in world opinion and in domestic democrat opinion against a military strike on Iran.
There is, of course, the temptation for George Bush to pursue a limited military strike involving only airpower. This could be dangerous in the extreme as a modern world example of the danger of regicide when it miscarries. One does not want to fail to kill the king. The reason to strike against Iran's nuclear potential is that potential includes its use against America by terrorists. Although the potential also includes a calamitous shifting of power in the oil-producing regions of the world, our biggest worry is a nuclear strike on America. If that were not a major worry we would not need to efface Iran's nuclear potential. So anything short of regime change, anything short of regicide, is likely only to provide these crazies with the rationalization they need to strike at us when they do get the bomb.
There are other options such as some some sort of a sabotage against their only refinery. This is unlikely to stop Iran's nuclear program because it is unlikely to produce regime change and as such can do more harm than good as it solidifies domestic Iranian support behind the regime. Diplomatic sanctions also carry this risk. Other forms of subversion could be attempted and might succeed in rousing the populace against an otherwise unpopular regime. But the United States, with a couple of exceptions like Chile, has a history of failure after failure after failure in these attempts.
The only sure way to effect regime change is a full scale military invasion and that is probably not practical because we simply do not have the available ground forces and equipment much less domestic support -even (gasp) among the Republican Party.
If one takes the risk of an atomic (or biological or chemical) attack on the heartland by terrorists armed from Iran seriously, one should be terrified at the prospect of Barak Obama in the White House for he will have absolutely no capacity to intimidate the Iranians into good behavior. He has forfeited that when he opted for direct talks without preconditions. He forfeited that when he centered his campaign around undermining the Iraq war and the immediate withdrawal of troops.
If nowhere else, here it least John McCain and claim a measure of credibility.
