Non, je ne regrette rien

It's aught-two all over again.

But the general concedes that attacking Iran could unleash terrifying consequences — among them, the near-certainty that Iran would retaliate.

A large and very strong state, Iran would "surely strike back," says Nicholas Burns, who was the Bush administration's top negotiator on Iran and former U.S. ambassador to NATO.

"And if it struck back, we might end up with a third war in the Middle East and South Asia, after Afghanistan and Iraq. Can we handle a third war?" he asks.

Get that? It isn't the attack that makes the war, but the retaliation. It's really a quite breathtaking position, a quantum theory of warfare, where the effect is the cause and the cause the effect.

I have long since grown inured to such casual insanity, and do not think it necessarily foretells an imminent American attack. The "option" of smashing some country or other to smithereens is always on the American table, as the saying goes, and our elite like to rub it, like old Catholics habitually fingering their rosaries. Simply a comfort that it's there.

Worth noting nonetheless: The Obama is a cruise missile liberal if there ever was one. We can all recall Responsible Liberalism's dire fear that that clumsy hick, George Dubbayew, would ruin Humanitarian Intervention for everyone with his clumsy war, and since The Obama is the Restoration president, the temptation to set it right must be very . . . tempting.