Blithering On

In every American war there is what should be an indelible truth: that we pull together and stand behind our mission and our troops. Support among our countrymen should be unambiguous and unwavering. Yet too often, that unified front becomes fractured by politics once the fighting begins. Of course, debate, dissent, and political maneuvering are the lifeblood of our constitutional republic. They're such an important part of our collective problem-solving formula that we protected that right in the U.S. Constitution. The issue with the politics isn't the dissent—it's the timing. And poor timing signals weakness. For decades, American leaders of both parties have declared that the United States would never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Those statements weren't whispered in some back room; they were repeated openly by presidents, secretaries of state, members of Congress, and allies abroad. They were a red line drawn by a long line of administrations intended to assure Ir...

  “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”   —Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 11, 1941 On November 26, 1941, a Japanese carrier force slipped out of port and headed east across the Pacific under strict orders to attack the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor. We know how that turned out, but suppose the United States had learned that the Japanese fleet had sailed and had intelligence that disclosed its mission before the Japanese struck on December 7. Would Washington have been justified in hitting them first? In hindsight, the answer is yes, but what about when that question mattered most: before the attack? More than a century earlier, a similar question helped shape the principle of self-defense in international law. In 1837, British forces crossed into American territory and destroyed the American steamer Caroline , which had been supplying Canadian rebels. The incident—known as the Caroline Affair—created a dip...

The United States has nuclear weapons. So does Russia, China, France, The United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Nine nations have them. Why not Iran? To answer that question, it helps to understand what Iran is—and what it isn't. I was a college student when the Shah was deposed in 1979. At the time, many observers described the Iranian Revolution as a freedom-seeking domestic uprising against a dictatorship, and that interpretation still persists among some commentators today. But revolutions that seek liberty don't replace one autocrat with another. What emerged under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wasn't a freedom movement. It was an effort to reshape the moral, political, and cultural order of Iranian society according to his Islamic revolutionary worldview. Khomeini believed Western political and cultural influence had corrupted the Muslim world and sought to replace it with a system governed by Islamic law and clerical authority. Khomeini taught that ...