More Gore, and Iran

First, more on Gore's speech from an op-ed in the Investors Business Daily: Al-Qaida On Line Two. Excerpt:

Saying the "very nature of our government" was threatened and that "the Constitution was in grave danger," the hyperbolic inventor of the Internet told an audience at Constitution Hall in the nation's capitol: "If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?"
Now, before anybody goes looking in the White House basement (the place where Gore's boss had the FBI files of Americans stacked) for citizens on the rack or being loaded into an iron maiden, just which citizens have been plucked off the street on Bush's say-so and shipped off to East Bongastan or wherever to be tortured?

The whole piece is worthy.

I’ve been watching the Iranian mess get…uh…messier. It seems like there aren’t many, if any, good options vis-à-vis the Mad Mullahs in Teheran. From what I can tell, the U.S. position is to dump the whole mess in the lap of the UN Security Council and place our bets on sanctions. Yeah, that’ll work. In the meantime, there’s been a lot of ink spilled on this subject, and the views and suggested actions are many and varied. What follows are four different opinions on Iran. All of these op-ed pieces are worth reading in their entireties.

In The Iran Charade, Part II, Charles Krauthammer simply tells Britain, France and Germany “You wasted two years of our time with futile negotiations. Thanks a lot.” Actually, he does go a bit further, illustrating the hard place we find ourselves in:

Indeed, the threat here works in reverse. It is the Iranians who have the world over a barrel. On Jan. 15, Iran's economy minister warned that Iran would retaliate for any sanctions by cutting its exports to ``raise oil prices beyond levels the West expects.'' A full cutoff could bring $100 oil and plunge the world into economic crisis.

Which is one of the reasons the Europeans are so mortified by the very thought of a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The problem is not just that they are spread out and hardened, making them difficult to find and to damage sufficiently to seriously set back Iran's program.

Simon Jenkins, a columnist for The Guardian (UK) predictably says we should just give up:

Iran is the regional superstate. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be "hugged close" it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.

Let's give Iran some of its own medicine, says Mark Steyn, in The Telegraph (UK).

The majority of Iran's population is younger than the revolution: whether or not they're as "pro-American" as is sometimes claimed, they have no memory of the Shah; all they've ever known is their ramshackle Islamic republic where the unemployment rate is currently 25 per cent. If war breaks out, those surplus young men will be in uniform and defending their homeland.

Why not tap into their excess energy right now? As the foreign terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq, you don't need a lot of local support to give the impression (at least to Tariq Ali and John Pilger) of a popular insurgency. Would it not be feasible to turn the tables and upgrade Iran's somewhat lethargic dissidents into something a little livelier? A Teheran preoccupied by internal suppression will find it harder to pull off its pretensions to regional superpower status.

Simon Heffer, in another Telegraph (UK) op-ed titled Doing Nothing in Iran is Not an Option, comes much closer to a realistic point of view:

Any military action against Iran, whatever it is and whoever takes it, is likely to be provocative to the wider Islamic community - but none is likely to be quite so internationally combustible as a unilateral decision by Israel to bomb - by conventional or possibly other means - Iran. This seems to leave only one feasible option, which is for a United Nations-endorsed series of air strikes on suspected nuclear installations in Iran, made after due and reasonable warning and only as a last resort. All that must be made clear - but it must also be made clear, by the united powers of the United Nations, that any insistence by Mr Ahmadinejad on pursuing his present policy will be met with such a response.

I would sincerely hope the combined intelligence agencies of the US, UK, France, Germany and Israel have been working diligently during the last two or three years on Mr. Steyn’s proposal. We’ve known for years that there’s a restive, rebellious element in Iranian society. The possibility of open rebellion is pretty small, however, given the opposition’s embryonic state, the (apparent) absolute control of the Iranian police state, and the mullah’s “govern by fear” approach.

The Iranians certainly aren’t afraid of sanctions, in the unlikely event the Security Council authorizes any sort of sanctions. When it comes to sanctions, the Iranians can hurt the West much more than the West can hurt them, simply by cutting off the oil tap, by whatever means.

We’re in between the largest of rocks and the hardest of hard places. A pre-emptive strike, our best option, is pretty scary. The good news is a lot of intelligent people have anticipated this situation, contingency plans have been drawn up, and our military is capable of implementing those plans. The bad news is no one can adequately predict the outcome, beyond delaying or, hopefully, eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. The bad news? There are always unintended consequences. But, as Mr. Heffer says, doing nothing is not an option.