You may have noticed that this blog has been unusually silent on this particular hot button issue.  I haven't talked about the latest events, nor made comments about what we should or shouldn't be doing.  One reason is that I've felt like it's been amply covered in other venues, and so I couldn't offer anything new or unique to the mix.  Another reason is that I've had mixed feelings on the whole issue, but haven't known quite what to say about it.  It's been quietly working on the back burner, and it wasn't until recently that it finally came to a boil in my mind.

One of the last times I talked about politics with my mom, she happened to bring up the British hostages in Iran and said something to this effect:

I wonder what would have happened if George Bush and Tony Blair had just sent every ship in the region off the coast of Iran, pointed their guns toward the shore and said "Give them back now!" and meant it.  I know that neither of them have the balls to do it, but I wonder what would have happened if they did.  It would have been over in two seconds, and Iran would have backed down.

At first my reaction was actually to say, "You know Mom, I don't think I really want to talk about this right now."  I wasn't in the mood for a political fight... but she kept poking and poking... and so she got one.  It's amazing how your thoughts can sometimes crystallize so perfectly at a moment like that, because my thoughts on the whole "Iran Problem" came into perfect clarity at that moment.

As I read so much commentary on the whole issue, I can't help but get the impression that a lot of people are itching for this fight.  I sometimes get the feeling that they're rubbing their hands together and saying "Yes... Iran really stepped in it this time.  Now we can finally do something about this!"  I'm not going Rosie O'Donnell here and suggesting that Britain did this on purpose to force an invasion, but I think a lot of people simply want to invade Iran and get it over with.

But to some up my feelings on that idea, first we need to recap where we are, and how we got here.

First there was Sept. 11th, and we got pissed at Afghanistan.  We should have been pissed.  Some people looked at what happened to the Russians and said it will be another Vietnam if we invaded.  Some people looked at how terrible the Taliban were and said we'd be greeted as liberators.  We decided to invade, and we kicked ass.  At first, we were seen as liberators.  But then all sorts of internal political differences that had been suppressed by that terrible government came to the surface and things got hard.  Now we're still there.

Then Saddam started making noise again.  He'd been causing problems for a long time, but in the prism of Sept. 11th, everything he did seemed different.  We were sick and tired of it, and weren't going to let another Bin Laden come to rise to spite us.  Some people said that the Iraqi Army would put up a strong resistance and we'd suffer.  Some people looked at how terrible the regime under Saddam was and said we'd be seen as liberators.  We decided to invade anyway, and we kicked ass.  At first, we were seen as liberators.  But then all sorts of internal political differences that had been suppressed by that terrible government came to the surface and things got hard.  Now we're still there.

And here we are in in 2007 and I'm hearing it all again.  I'm hearing how terrible the Iranians are, and how they have to be stopped.  I'm hearing the same worries about how the Iranians would put up a strong fight if we invaded, and also how we'd be seen as liberators because of how terrible that government is.  It all sounds too familiar.  I have no doubt that we'd kick ass... but then what?  We're already occupying two countries, and a lot of people don't want to accept the reality that this limits our options.  I don't think we have the resources to occupy a third.  We might be able to invade, but then what?  Would going in for a short time and the pulling out do any good?  After all, we're contemplating war here, not high school sex.

I think there are a lot of people who want to feel like we're successful again, and they're looking at Iran and are giddy about invading.  I think some people are almost happy Iran seems to be picking a fight with us.  You should never feel giddy about starting a war.  After all... if we've invaded two... we might as well go for the hat trick right?  They also don't want to accept the fundamental reality that in order to start a third war, we need to finish the other two.  If we need to learn anything from Iraq, it's that occupying a country takes a lot more manpower than invading one.  We may not be quite stretched to the breaking point yet, but if we add a 3rd war to the mix, we will be.  I'm not even talking about political and social will to start a third war either.  I'm just talking about logistics.  When you consider political will to invade, you can forget about it all together.  This country is simply war weary.

Iran knows this... and so they know they have a certain amount of wiggle room in what they can do.  Bush and Blair know this too... which is why things went down exactly like they did last week.  I'm not suggesting that invading Afghanistan and Iraq were mistakes... although certainly mistakes have been made in how we handled the aftermath of the real shooting wars.  But that doesn't change the fact that occupying those two countries limits what we can do to a third.