Hell Bent

All the talk about killing Iranians and threats to Iran... this is a very bad sign. Just as Bush is being repudiated for his actions, and is being told that the war's escalation is against national interests, he's widening the range for the war, escalating the scale of the conflict and turning his sites to a new enemy.

Let's be clear: Iran hasn't won a lot of friends lately in the global community. But in the midst of the Iraq debacle, the idea that we would pick more fights, and stray further from any semblance of rational foreign policy (if you can call it that) just stinks of messianic stubbornness.

What strikes me as particularly absurd is that the goals of marginalizing terrorist organizations and protecting those in need fall further and further by the wayside. The military could be of good use in Darfur, of course, and it's not present or engaged there. As we widen the on-the-ground military range of the conflict in Iraq, we not only turn further away from complex, cell-based organizations that use guerilla tactics, we also stoke the fires of anti-US sentiment... arguably a key reason for the very existence of said groups.

World War III? A different kind of war...