Pohhoretz Refutation

Norman (the Hun) Podhoretz had a particularly odious op-ed today in the Journal. It was thing of neo-con beauty, missing only blazing torches, jackboots, and screaming crowds in the Olympische Stade. Wispher at dKos has a brilliant reposte that skewers the argument point by point, and leave Norman a smoking corpse in the Kanzlerei motorcourt.

Clearly we should have promptly invaded their country at such an outrage and diplomacy be damned.

This seems a bit of reckless saber-rattling by someone who has never even held a saber. In the middle of a massive conflict in Iraq that is spiraling out of control, rising sentiments against the West, and constant worry that the Iraq War will spill over into a regional conflict, why in the world would you want Britain to suddenly pounce in and attack another country over 16 individuals that were not being harmed when Iran initiated diplomatic talks themselves?!? Sure Ahmadinejad played up the whole benefactor thing about how gracious he was to release them but we knew he’d do that as nothing more then political theater. The fact is that 16 Brits came home safely and Iran is still officially on the sideline while the Iraq war continues. Diplomacy has a purpose and this is a clear example of it.

...

The last nation we faced that threatened any kind of nuclear attack was the USSR. I don’t seem to recall any kind of backing down in the face of that. I seem to remember us winning the Cold War. Sorry... I mean World War III.

Winning the cold war without a single direct engagement and not having even one nuclear weapon fired on either side must be too old-fashioned for Mr. Podhoretz. Deterrence is clearly part of that Pre-9/11 World we hear derided so often.

And those are just the semi-snark-a-licious parts; read it all.