They Finally Have a Plan!

There's a fairly bizarre theme that has run through the sites of our left-leaning friends recently, and which a recent James Fallows' piece epitomizes. It concerns what a good liberal should do to thwart Bush's Middle East policies. Strangely, Fallows cedes Iraq to Bush in the first paragraph, and doesn't look back. He wants to talk about Iran. You see, he strongly opposes invading it.

Fallows notes that "[w]ar with Iran would be a catastrophe that would make us look back fondly on the minor inconvenience of being bogged down in Iraq." And, of course, he's right. There are sundry reasons why an invasion of Iran would be dumb, such as a lack of troops, a lack of funds, and a lack of international support. But Fallows hints darkly that the Bush Administration may do so anyway. Maybe he knows something I don't.

This has nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with the 2008 elections. Fallows and company have no idea how to deal with Middle East foreign policy, so they take a bleeding obvious stand and erect a straw man about Bush wanting to do just the opposite. What does Fallows say to those who bring up the obvious fact that nobody in the Bush Administration has suggested invading Iran? After Iraq, "no one can any longer trust the Administration to recognize and defend America’s rational self-interest."

That puts the argument right back where Fallows wants it: on the decision to invade Iraq (a decision Dems were ambivalent about at the time), not what to do next. Spencer Ackerman uses this opportunity to resurrect the ghost of Ari Fleischer, suggesting that when Robert Gates said there were no plans to invade Iran...he actually meant the exact opposite. The good folks over in The Plank are all in a tizzy, remembering a Fox News headline in May 2002 where Rumsfeld said there were no plans for an Iraq invasion. Oh no, remember what happened the last time Bush said he wouldn't invade a country! Look what happened there! Let's talk about that, not what we should do now.

Fallows celebrates his position by remarking that "Iran is easy." It sure is. These are the types of issues that he should limit himself to, for the time being.