It's so easy to start a war, and so hard to end them

So, there have been a lot of articles lately about how great it'd be if the Israelis, acting as our proxies, were to bomb Iran.

No, really.

The logic, such as it is, is that Israel's having sixty-plus nukes is a stabilizing force in the region, whereas Iran's simply having the capability to someday build one wd bring on the apocalypse.

I found particularly insidious a piece loaned me by the barista at Magnolia's only internet cafe,* who was reading it for a class. Entitled "Israel's Closing Window to Strike Iran" by one David Makovsky, it essentially argues that launching a surprise bombing raid right now on all Iran's nuclear facilities is the only way to slow down their development.** If they wait even a few months, it'll be too late, since the Iranians are taking steps to protect their power plants from attack.

It's eerie how much the "we have to attack now, before it's too late!" sounds almost exactly like what all those Japanese admirals were saying in November 1941. That didn't work out too well for them in the end.

For their part, the Iranians have warned that any such strike will be taken by them as a declaration of war, and will be marked by their shutting down the Persian Gulf and ending all flow of oil to Europe. Which will crash the world's largest economy, the E.U.. Which won't be at all good for us, either.

Here's hoping the Israelis don't follow Imperial Japan down that same path.

--John R.

*internet cafe & tanning salon, an interesting combination I'd not run across before.

**(apparently the ongoing assassination campaign of Iranian scientists isn't working)