Asking the right questions

So far the blogtopia sinister discussion of the cowboy in chief's incipient Iran war plan has focused on the disastrous strategic consequences of launching a new war. Almost lost in all of this is the fact that, whatever they say, Republican strategists are more concerned with the domestic political implications of war than they are with the geopolitical consequences.^[1] So the right sort of questions to be asking aren't about how the Bush Administration expects bombing Iran to accomplish American strategic goals but are rather about how the Bush Administration expects bombing Iran to affect the midterm elections in November.

Blogging over at This Modern World, Greg Saunders has begun asking the right questions.

Seriously, how would Democrats respond to a use of force resolution against Iran? The obvious answer would be to oppose it on the grounds that the Bush Administration has already shown itself to be dishonest and incompetent with Iraq, but do the Democrats in D.C. have the guts to vote against a war resolution, especially when it concerns a country that, in contrast to Saddam Hussein’s caginess, is openly flaunting its nuclear technology? Considering that it was a Democratic Senate that gave Bush the authorization to invade Iraq in 2002, I have my doubts about whether the current slate would be willing to risk looking weak on national security in order to do the right thing. |link|

(emphasis added)

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1 Do you think it's even remotely possible that when G. W. says, "...global war on terra" he really means a global war on Terra and is reveling in the irony of saying straight out that he's waging war on the planet?