I just think we are screwing it up with Iran. We just don't want to get down to nitty gritty about what this is all about. We want Iran to not have nuclear weapons, but we have them. (and in "we" I include Israel). It's like asking someone to fight a fight where you have a gun and they don't, and when they ask to have a gun to make it more fair, you say, "hell no, you can't have one." It's just not the kind of situation that is stable at all.

There's several reasons why cracking down on Iran is not going to work. First, we won't be able to get consensus in the UN Security Council. And why is that? Because, for one, we have been in China's face over various things. That isn't the smartest tact to take against a power that we owe so much money. Oh yeah, and we've been in Russia's face too. First, with Bush's plan to put missiles in Chechloslovakia or whereever in eastern Europe, which really pissed off the Russians.

And then Obama was being the nice guy and pulling back on that. But now he wants to put them in Romania, as if that would be ok. Don't we get it? And then we have done nothing to make real progress that is public on the Israeli-Palestianian conflict. So we've really not made any substantial gains in PR on the Arab front. So really and truthfully, we have some of the western Europe countries on our side, but they are puny compared with Russia and China. If they both squeeze us in Afghanistan, which they probably are, and which is why we aren't just rolling over the rag-tag taliban, and squeeze us economically, we can be reduced to embarassment internationally. In fact, this ploy of wanting to talk to the taliban, which was reported again tonight on some of the national media, shows me that we are really wanting a way out. I told Kristi that whenever I was in litigation against the federal government, that when they came forward and wanted to settle, that you knew they felt really weak and you had a great chance to get some good terms. I can only imagine the same with the taliban.

And with Israel, it isn't just that they continue to occupy and unjustly treat the palestinians. It's that they have this way out of proportion military for the size of their nation, including, what most analysts believe, are some nuclear weapons, and they will use it if necessary. All of this has to be dealt with before we will gain any serious trust with the arab world as a whole.

If we or Israel attack Iran, there will be no peace with that part of the world for the rest of my lifetime and probably beyond. And if we think we can wipe them off the face of the earth and the rest of the world will think that is ok, that's a pretty big risk to take. We need to be talking to Iran about balance of power and how that can relate to peace. About global nuclear disarmament, and not just a few powerful countries with nuclear bombs and no one else. That just isn't going to work. But we are on a very precarious path with Iran, and a couple more slips and we could have a serious, but avoidable, disaster on the world's hands.