So, the mullahs are not bluffing or at least, as you say, we must proceed under the assumption that they are not bluffing. What to do about it?
All of the steps which you recite to move us away from Muslim oil dependency are wonderful and they should have been taken in a generation ago but they were not. Now we must wait a generation for their effect, and that is time we do not have. We did not drill and we do not build refineries. Equally, we cannot transition within a generation.
The alternative to doing nothing is not, as you suggest, going nuclear against Iran. I cannot conceive of a bigger blunder. Iran's nuclear potential must be taken out but it must be done with conventional weapons. You cite our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as potential stepping stones into Iran, and so they are. But in today's age, such bases are less valuable than they were even 10 or 20 years ago. You cite that we have moved the Navy into the Gulf, and so we have. But a Navy can be moved anywhere it is wet and can be positioned in the gulf at will.
The problem with taking out Iran's nuclear potential by conventional assets is that our air power is insufficient to accomplish the task alone, and our ground forces are being wasted in Iraq. By all accounts, we simply do not have the ground forces available to mount a conventional strike. We cannot do it alone with conventional air assets. That is our dilemma and we compounding it in Iraq.
By the nature of democracy, and our alliance with other Western democracies, a protracted boycott or sanctions regime, or blockade, is doomed to failure. Worse, it must ultimately rebound against us and backfire. It will not bring sufficient pain to Iran to cause the mullahs to change their ways but it will certainly break the Western alliance. Whatever is done 'twer better if it were quickly done.
We armchair strategists lack intelligence to tell us how long a grace period we have before Iran gets the bomb. Some accounts say they have one already and some accounts say it must be more than a decade. George Bush will be out of office in about 15 months. I do not share your confidence that a Democrat will have the starch to do what's right. As a matter of fact, I think the odds are long against it. That would run counter to everything the post-Vietnam War Democratic Party stands for.
If we knew that we had 10 years, we could set in train a campaign to undermine the Iranian regime from within. But even if the CIA were to report today that we had those 10 years, given the degree to which the CIA is discredited by its blunders of in Iran, can one steak the very future of America on its findings?
I'm afraid it is up to George Bush and his Christian character.
