The Washington Post says that the recent NIE revelations demonstrate that now is not the time to go all weak-kneed on Iran. After showing the same skepticism I’ve held since the story first broke, and reading the parts of the NIE the Bush-hating left apparently skipped over, the WaPo comes to this conclusion:
President Bush yesterday vowed to continue pushing for international sanctions. But Democrats and some Republicans are arguing that now is the time for the Bush administration to begin a broad dialogue with Iran — and drop a precondition that the regime first suspend uranium enrichment. It’s an odd time to recommend such a concession: The latest European Union talks with Iran last week were a disaster, in which a new hard-line envoy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad withdrew the previous, inadequate Iranian compromise proposals. Were the Bush administration to abandon its insistence on a suspension of enrichment, Mr. Ahmadinejad would declare victory over the relative moderates in Iran who have recently criticized his uncompromising stance.
Mad Mahmoud may be…err…mad, but he’s not stupid. He can read the MSM headlines and listen to the sound bytes given by the hapless Harry Reid and his ilk. He knows that all he has to do is to puff and bluster and most of the left will start their reflexive hand-wringing, wondering what we can do to make him happy again and why our mean ol’ President couldn’t be nicer to a perfectly cromulent world leader like Mr. Ahmadinejad. Once most of the left has been cowed into their standard submission pose, he can simply delay until he has the bomb he wants.
That is, unless the President can continue to stand fast. We have an important job in that regard. We can stand firmly behind the President as he stares down the man who wants to usher in the apocalypse. We can make darned sure he knows that we’ll be the steel behind his diplomacy and we’ll make sure that our diplomats do his bidding and not their own.
Now is not the time to put down the stick. Now is the time to remind mad Mahmoud that our pimp hand is strong indeed. We are more than happy to help him choose the easy way and lay down his nuclear weapon program for good. But if he chooses the hard way, we will not hesitate to smack him down.
