Time to Whack Iran?

The New York Sun comments today that the War with Iran has already begun, noting an interesting confluence of events:

Years from now, the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit will be regarded like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Against the backdrop of Kassam rocket fire on Israelis living within range of the Gaza Strip, it was the fate of Corporal Shalit that triggered the Israeli return to Gaza, which in turn brought the Hezbollah forces into the game.

The Sun also notes that:

Ephraim Sneh, a former general and Labor Party leader who is the Israeli longest drawing attention to the approaching conflict with Iran, is saying that the current moment reminds him of the Spanish Civil War. The broader global forces are aligned; local actors are committed. It is a bloody test, a macabre dress rehearsal, for what lies over the horizon.

But the paper duly notes that all the violent players are being funded by Iran, which is intent on creating enough murderous mischief in the region to distract the West from its pursuit of the "peaceful" Iranian nuclear program. (And any lefty clowns who are still buying this line are invited to engage with Wonker offline to discuss the purchase of a famous bridge in NYC.) Read the restof David Twesky's observations in the Sun here. Kinda scary, but not implausible. The MSM, in its incessant onslaughts on US activities in the region fails to point out that the real Bush strategery all along has been to isolate the great purveyors of terrorism in the world, the Iranian mullahs. Not coincidentally, the mullahs seek nuclear weapons precisely to cement their hold on the World of Jihad, even though it's widely believed to be Sunni turf. But we mustn't forget that Islamofascists come in all flavors, and Iran has generally numbered itself among the most ruthless of the bunch.

As events in the Middle East heat up, and along with them, oil and commodity prices, we need to retain sight of the fact that these crazed fanatics have learned their lesson well. As the U.S. under Reagan defeated the Soviets economically rather than militarily, so, too, are the mad mullahs and their ilk out to replicate this feat upon the West.

The lefties are right about one thing: it IS all about oil. But, indulging in their fantasy of BushEnron-Cheney-Halliburton bashing, they fail to follow this observation to its not-so-surprising conclusion. It's the Chinese and Russians, through their support and "friendship" for Iran, who are waging the war that's all about oil. That they might get burnt by the Islamofascists is not yet something that shows up on their collective radar screens.

This intensely complicated conflict is going to require some quick and decisive thinking. We hope the same Bush that whacked the Taliban in Afghanistan within weeks in response to 9/11 responds soon in like kind to the latest provocations. Otherwise, to borrow a Korean term, we're all going to be in pretty deep kimchee pretty soon.