BREATHTAKING….You have to give the hawks credit. Here is Robert Kaplan on why George Bush will have trouble getting support for a war with Iran:

Though they may not admit it, the political elites beyond loyal administration circles, and particularly in Europe, simply do not trust Bush’s ability to wage another war. Here is where the real problem lies; by delegitimizing his ability to wage war, they delegitimize his right to wage war.

That’s a helluva triple gainer, isn’t it? The problem, apparently, lies not in the actual fact that Bush has prosecuted the Iraq war with astonishing incompetence, but in the fact that non-Republican “political elites” have peevishly decided to take note of Bush’s performance. Wow.

Believe it or not, though, it gets worse later on in the piece:

As someone who supported the invasion of Iraq, I know that the problem with grand assumptions is that they’re nice when they succeed; otherwise you require a Plan B. The idea that there is no alternative to diplomacy in dealing with Iran, even after it achieves nuclear status, is another grand assumption, but without a Plan B.

The president and his hawkish enablers are rather plainly trying to maneuver the country into a position where military force will be the only plausible option available to us against Iran. Not only do they have no Plan B, but they’re actively trying to close off even the possibility of a Plan B in the future. Is this a problem? You’d think so, but in a breathtaking piece of table-turning chutzpah Kaplan declares that the real problem lies with those who are trying to keep our options open. Apparently they suffer from the unforgivable stain of having been right about Iraq.

The plain fact is that military action is always a Plan B. The Pentagon has multiple contingency plans for war against Iran, and those plans will continue to be updated and available to whoever is sitting in the Oval Office. If, in the end, we truly feel that we have no other choice, military force will always be an option. That’s not a problem. It’s preemptively closing off all the other avenues that’s the problem.