It’s crazy-time for the neocons. The war in Iraq was a disaster; the war in Afghanistan still is a disaster. And now they’re after Iran. Don’t they ever learn?
“War is an evil. But sometimes a preventive war can be a lesser evil than a policy of appeasement,” wrote historian Niall Ferguson. “It feels like the eve of some creative destruction.” Illustrating the enormous chasm between clever and smart, the Foreign Policy Initiative’s Jamie Fly and the American Enterprise Institute’s Gary Schmitt suggested that, well, if we’re going to be there anyway, we shouldn’t stop at the nuclear sites, but instead go all the way and destroy the Iranian regime. “If strikes are chosen,” they wrote, “it would be far better to put the regime at risk than to leave it wounded but still nuclear capable and ready to fight another day.” The Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens concurred. “Destroying Iran’s nuclear sites will be a short-lived victory if it isn’t matched to the broader goal of ending the regime,” Stephens wrote. “The ultimate remedy is Iranian regime change,” chimed in Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.
As with the calls for war against raq, what all of these pieces share is a shockingly blithe attitude toward the likely costs of such a war, and a failure to seriously grapple with the consequences.
Truth and Traditions 
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