Generalissimo Dean

The following is, I suppose, what passes for "hawkishness" in Bizarro World:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday that while Iran poses a genuine "danger" to the United States, the U.S. military is now too weak to respond.

Asked whether the U.S. might have to resort to military action against Iran, Dean told CBS's Face the Nation that President Bush had "squandered our resources in Iraq, which was not a danger to the United States."

Does it need pointing out that Dr. Demented hasn't the foggiest notion of what our "resources" are? Or that he was roaringly wrong on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein? Or that he knows less about geostrategy than I know about Jenny Craig?

Or, for that matter, that he ducked the question. Bob Schieffer should have pinned Dean down by getting even more specific: "Do you support military action against Iran?" If he'd been pit-bullish about it, Chairman How would have been forced to admit that of course he doesn't support military action against Iran, any more than he did in Iraq. And if President Bush had made liberating Iran the first priority instead of taking out Saddam Hussein, Dean's opposition would have been as maniacally and seditiously full-throated as it was vis-a-vie Operation Iraqi Freedom, and now he'd be complaining that we're "trapped" in a "quagmire" and that Iran is "another Vietnam" and how we should have moved against Saddam first "like President Clinton recommended" because of the "obvious threat" posed by his WMD.

The operative template with the loony left is "any port in a storm." Howie Dean appears indefatiguable in proving that axiom in perpetuity.

UPDATE: Jed Babbin talks some sense on the matter of which the Vermont Vomiteer tried to make a partisan mockery. His take? Buy time:

Because the EUnuchs have already given up all others, the military option the President mentioned is all we have left. It is essential to understand what this option is, and what it isn't. There is no invasion option. Even if our forces weren't stretched too far in Iraq, we haven't either the ability or the necessity of mounting a ground invasion of Iran. But there are three other parts to the military option.

First, though we hear endless reports about the Iranian people's desire to overthrow the mullahs, there is great popular support for the nuclear weapons program. We should help foment revolution in Iran, but to do so is not to deal with the ultimate problem of the nuclear program. If there were a democratic regime in Iran that stood for decades solidly against terrorism, perhaps - just perhaps - a nuclear-armed Iran might be tolerable. This is not an option we will be able to engage in the foreseeable future.

Second, we can use stealth aircraft to destroy some few of the Iranian nuclear facilities. We don't know where they all are, and some are buried too deeply to be reached with anything other than the burrowing nuclear weapons we haven't even begun to develop. To whatever extent we can, we must delay the Iranian nuclear program by these strikes.

Third, we can use covert action to delay and disrupt Iran's nuclear program. Sending special operations forces into Iran covertly will be enormously dangerous for the men assigned. But this high risk is paralleled by the possibility of a high reward. Such operations can do two things. First, they can help the Iranian resistance train, arm, hide, and prepare to overthrow the mullahs. In doing so, they can identify strong Iranians whose interest in democracy is sincere and ready them to install an interim government immediately after the mullahs are driven out. We failed to do this in Iraq, and are still paying the price for this mistake with the blood of our soldiers. Second, they can pinpoint the location of concealed nuclear arms sites for stealth air strikes and penetrate and attack those too deeply buried for conventional attack. Third, they can provide hard intelligence on the progress of the weapons development. It's hard saying, but it would be worth the loss of some of these wonderful guys to achieve these goals.

JB, in the military vernacular, "knows his shit." And if he's right that there's no invasion option, we are in some seriously deep quantity of the commodity of which he is so knowledgeable. We're left with a strategy of acts of war short of all-out war to gain time to build up to all-out war in order to avoid nuclear armageddon while somehow not provoking all-out war AND nuclear armageddon.

Talk about a "long row to hoe" - from the corner the EUnuchs have backed us into.

Babbin speaks directly to Dr. Demented in his punchline:

Opponents of air strikes and other military action say that if we attack Iran, it will unleash every terrorist it employs against us, and more Americans will die. But the choice they pose, between inaction and terrorism, is a false one. The choice is between action now, and nuclear terrorism later. It is false to say that the ends never justify the means.

And look on the bright side (to the extent there is one): At least we won't have to worry about Saddam Hussein.