The much rumored Michael Oren / Yossi Klein Halevi New Republic article on the Iranian nuclear program is out. Their analysis of most aspects of the issue is covered by things I’ve written elsewhere, but the very end of the article waxes philosophical in an interesting way:

If [the international community] fails, then Israel will have no choice but to uphold its role as refuge of the Jewish people. A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons–by a country that denies the genocide against Europe’s six million Jews while threatening Israel’s six million Jews–will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history. Fortunately, even the government of Ehud Olmert, widely criticized as incompetent and corrupt, seems to understand that, on this issue at least, it cannot fail.

The irony here is that, as Oren and Halevi concede, it would be impossible for Israel to wage this war without American support. This means, however, that on the Oren/Halevi analysis, the Zionist project has already failed. Far from a “refuge of the Jewish people” Israel has become, on their view, a menace — a prison, a trap — where Jews are held hostage to the onrushing Persian hordes. And not only are Israeli Jews threatened (not a new historical development) but they’re incapable of defending themselves. They need the United States of America to bail them out. But, of course, the whole point of Israel-as-Jewish-refuge was precisely that you can’t count on the goyim, even the nice liberal goyim of the United States, to do what it takes to protect the Jews when the chips are on the table.

This is the fairly demented logic of the binational hawk movement in Tel Aviv and Washington. The United States and Israel will, side-by-side, engage in a series of endless military confrontations with the Muslim population of the region. This will allow Israel to avoid making unpalatable concessions on the Palestinian front, but carries the price of putting Israel in a situation that’s only tenable with continuous American backing. This serves the interests of “pro-Israel” institutions in the United States along with the psychological needs of diaspora Zionists who can’t be bothered to actually learn Hebrew and move to Israel since it gives them something to do. After all, an Israel that found security through peace with its neighbors wouldn’t need all these foreign advocates.It’s far from clear, however, that it serves the interests of actual Israelis who, after all, don’t have the luxury of just retreating to another continent when these schemes blow up catastrophically.

One tragic consequence of the Peretz/MLK post yesterday was that it put me in the awkward position of defending Tom Friedman. Fortunately, in today’s offering America’s most influential foreign affairs journalist is still playing what Greg Sargent has dubbed the “conditional shuffle” responding to Bush’s proposals by listing scenarios under which he could support them rather than facing the reality that Bush isn’t going to do any of these things. The trouble, obviously, is that were Friedman to acknowledge that Bush won’t, say, hold a regional peace conference, he’d have to admit that the right thing to do in Iraq is withdraw.

And, of course, once you don the Moustache of Understanding you’ll realize that in order to be a Serious Person it’s important that you never agree with liberals.

One of several things that’s gone wrong with this debate already is that to the extent that you care about the possibility of Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb you should become more inclined to favor bombing Iran. The presupposition there is that bombing Iran will prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

There is, however, no reason to believe this. The correct calculation is that you need to consider how much the damage done will set the Iranian nuclear program back — X. Then you need to subtract from X how much the program will be speeded-up by the political empowerment of Iranian hawks likely to increase funding for the program. Then you need to further subtract from X how much the program will be speeded-up by decreased levels of international cooperation in preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. This second point is crucial. The reason Iran doesn’t have a bomb today is that it’s hard to buy or make the stuff you need to get the job done. How hard this is has everything to do with how seriously a whole bunch of countries — basically all the nuclear countries (Russia, China, India, Pakistan) plus all the right countries (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Western Europe) — take the job of preventing Iran from acquiring the relevant material.

Right now, these countries are taking that job quite seriously. In the past, they’ve taken it less seriously. In the future, they may take it even less seriously. At the moment, one of the main reasons the world is doing a very good job on this front is precisely because they don’t want to see anything crazy happen. Something crazy like the United States or Israel with US support, launching a clearly illegal, unprovoked war against Iran. Launch the war, and part of the incentive to clamp down on Iran goes the other way. And what’s more, sponsoring acts of unchecked aggression are just the kind of thing that makes other states and foreign populations disinclined to police their own commerce in support of your security agenda.

In short, bombing Iran and the following cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, will certainly lead to a lot of people dying. It will certainly lead to lost arms. Severed legs. Severe scarring. Bad burns. Mothers weeping for their dead children. Children weeping for their dead fathers. Houses destroyed and damaged. Permanent hearing loss induced by deafening noises. People go blind. People will be brain damaged by head trauma. That we know. The odds of a diplomatic resolution to the various issues in the US-Iranian bilateral relationship ever emerging will almost certainly plummet. And as a bonus, it might delay Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb by a quantity of time that’s both unknown and unknowable, or else it might speed said acquisition up.

New Republic editor in chief Martin Peretz manages simultaneously demonstrate ignorance of widely known historical facts and achieve the impressive feat of making Tom Friedman look smart:

Poor Tom Friedman. He is looking for a Muslim Martin Luther King. There is none, Tom. If one were living on earth, they’d break his windows. Imprison him. Or kill him. Finished.

Imagine that! A society where a figure like King could be imprisoned or even killed! Those Muslims sure are vicious and evil.

I wonder if Jon Chait and others concerned about Wesley Clark’s alleged anti-semitism feel it’s a problem that one of America’s leading political magazines is owned and operated by a man whose political opinions appear to be primarily driven by bigotry against Arabs and Muslims; keep your eyes on The Plank for a response.

David Brooks, April 10 2004:

Come on people, let’s get a grip.

This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam. Pundits and sages were spinning a whole series of mutually exclusive disaster scenarios: Civil war! A nationwide rebellion!

January 25, 2007:

Iraq is at the beginning of a civil war fought using the tactics of genocide, and it has all the conditions to get much worse. As a Newsweek correspondent, Christian Caryl, wrote recently from Baghdad, “What’s clear is that we’re far closer to the beginning of this cycle of violence than to its end.” As John Burns of The Times said on “Charlie Rose” last night, “Friends of mine who are Iraqis — Shiite, Sunni, Kurd — all foresee a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that would absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now.”

September 18, 2004:

As we saw in El Salvador and as Iraqi insurgents understand, elections suck the oxygen from a rebel army. They refute the claim that violence is the best way to change things. Moreover, they produce democratic leaders who are much better equipped to win an insurgency war.

January 25, 2007:

The weakness of the Bush surge plan is that it relies on the Maliki government to somehow be above this vortex. But there are no impartial institutions in Iraq, ready to foster reconciliation. As ABC’s Jonathan Karl notes in The Weekly Standard, the Shiite finance ministries now close banks that may finance Sunni investments. The Saadrist health ministries dismiss Sunni doctors. The sectarian vortex is not fomented by extremists who are appendages to society. The vortex is through and through.

So having heaped scorn a few years ago on doves who were later proven right — not necessarily shown to be all-wise, all-knowing sages on all subjects, but who certainly demonstrated a greater degree of understanding of the nation of Iraq and the dynamics of the war there — does Brooks have a less scornful view of those same people and their ideas today? Of course not: “The Democratic approach, as articulated by Senator Jim Webb — simply get out of Iraq ‘in short order’ — is a howl of pain that takes no note of the long-term political and humanitarian consequences.”

Well, it’s hard to say. Maybe we just need classicists with better political judgment. But Victor Davis Hanson’s continuing inability to see the parallels between Iraq and the Athenian campaign in Sicily is pretty damn weird. I mean, clearly, there are differences — we have airplanes, they spoke Greek, etc., etc,. etc. but it’s still pretty freaking obvious.

I was upset to see that this little girl’s SOTU response was slightly more popular than mine but then I actually watched it and it’s pretty awesome:

Well said.

Here’s the Financial Times‘s Gideon Rachman on high-level Israeli officials, American hawks, and John Edwards getting together at the shop and here’s his take on the Israeli view of things: “they clearly think that it is most likely that Israel and the United States will soon be faced by the decision over whether to take military action. They hope the US will do it. But the strong implication is that Israel will take action alone if necessary. But they are far from sanguine about the potential regional consequences, in terms of a wider war, terrorism and so on.” Well, I’m not sanguine either, which seems like one of several good reasons not to do it.

Here’s what John Edwards told the audience. It’s not quite as bad a talk as I was initially led to believe. That said, with the United States and Israel drifting in the direction of a disastrous Iran policy Edwards is rather clearly choosing not to push against the drift. How much of this is political expediency and how much is convictions?

UPDATE: Stoller is harsh but fair: “The issue for John Edwards has always been credibility. Why should we trust a man who sold us out on the war vote? His answer is that he’s changed. But has he?” I agree. I understand the political realities here, but I’d be much more inclined to give Edwards slack on this had he shown better judgment in the past.

I know Petey thinks monomania is an unattractive quality in a blogger, but it does seem to me that somebody should pay attention as the Iran war drums keep beating. Here‘s Amir Taheri in The New York Post and here‘s Benny Morris in The New York Sun (see Robert Farley’s refutation) and here‘s New Republic editor Martin Peretz’s endorsement of the latter.

UPDATE: Here‘s moderate warmonger Patrick Clawson from WINEP writing in the World Jewish Digest. Clawson, to his credit, recognizes that the international blowback from unilateral Israel or American strikes would, at this point, be extremely severe and advocates not bombing but rather laying the diplomatic and logistical groundwork for future bombing.

Look, ma, freedom is on the march:

Fires at scores of barricades sent billowing black smoke against a pale blue sky. Across the capital, only mopeds, some carrying Hezbollah cadres with walkie talkies, navigated the roadblocks along usually clogged streets that were empty. On the airport highway, a half-dozen barricades blocked traffic, forcing some travelers to drag their luggage by foot. Government supporters and foes squared off across the barricades, hurling rocks, sticks and insults in clashes that sometimes lasted hours.

GatewayPundit rounds up right blogistan’s reactions — shockingly this wave of protests isn’t being wildly celebrated by hawks and civil disobedience is no longer equivalent to the dawning of democracy. Hezbollah’s protest babes aren’t hot enough I guess?