Since Iraq Went So Well – Let’s Do It Even Better With Iran

Is Barbara Lerner advocating an invasion of Iran?

Only America has both the courage and the military might to save these Iranians, along with ourselves and decent people of all religions everywhere, from the new age of barbarism that threatens us all. To do that, we must ignore the Chamberlains among us and rally behind our Churchills, and we must act. In 2003, 2004, and even 2005, I thought we could rein in the mullahs without needing to attack Iran itself. I thought we could send them a sufficiently chilling message by striking the terrorist strongholds of their smaller, weaker surrogates in Syria and Hezbollahland. Now, it is too late for that. We need to get ready as quickly as possible to mount a major air assault, not just to take out as many of Iran’s nuclear sites as we can find, but to defeat the rising evil behind them by aiming our bombs and missiles at Iran’s leaders, its Revolutionary Guards, and the bully boys of the Basij too. But we cannot stop there; we also need to bomb Hezbollahland in Lebanon

I guess so, which is no surprise given this:

I think President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and dethrone Saddam Hussein was a brave, right, and necessary decision, and an essential part of a much larger war we have no choice but to fight and win—the global, 21st-century war against Islamofascist supremacy and terror. And like many conservatives, I think the Bush administration handled the invasion of Iraq brilliantly, but made an awful mess of the post-invasion period.

Hmmm – a Biden Democrat is she? She claims to have followed Biden in criticizing the post-invasion fiasco but then:

In 2006, as the bloodshed in Iraq persisted and the regional situation deteriorated, I stopped criticizing our policies in Iraq for the same reason many other conservatives have lately been reluctant to do so: for fear of adding weight to a Leftist alternative that is even worse.

The current rightwing rational for not criticizing this White House does seem to be it’s the fault of us liberals. But she does admit to three mistakes:

The surest way to draw those wrong conclusions would be to accept the analysis of the rebel generals currently baying for our Defense secretary’s head, because the three mistakes they harp on aren’t mistakes at all, and the three big mistakes we really did make weren’t made by Donald Rumsfeld. They are the mistakes of the State Department, the CIA, and the rebel generals themselves

She claims that mistake #1 was NOT an inadequate number of U.S. troops and Rumsfeld’s actions to “de-Baathify the country aggressively” – but simply having Paul Bremer in charge. She also claims we made a mistake of being too sensitive “to the finer nuances of Iraqi culture”. Finally, she claims mistake #3 was ignoring the neighbors in the sense that she believed we shouldn’t have had military action against Iran sooner. I guess Lerner needs to consult with Karl Rove on the calendar thing. The crucial date in question is in November 2006 – when the National Review and the Rove Republicans need to win the war on us Democrats.

I hope I’m wrong here – I hope the grownups in the Republican Party step up and demand diplomacy and not another idiotic invasion.

Update: Talkleft is suggesting that our military is already sending aircraft carriers towards Iran for possible air strikes this summer. I do hope this is not the White House plan.