...The Right and the Left pick and choose their wars. Vietnam was a righteous crusade to the Right, a shame-inducing albatross for the Left. For the "progressive" Left, Clinton's Balkan adventure was a heroic reenactment of World War II, albeit on a less dramatic and destructive scale; for the Right, it was a case of international do-gooding that enabled our Islamist enemies to rally their forces.

- Justin Raimondo, 10/07/09

Sure looks like the "hawks' nest" pushing for shock and awe revival - joined, of course, by our spongy media - have done their work well. A poll released today shows not only that Americans favor military action against Iran, should talks fail, but also indicates most of the country gives chances for success in seminal U.S./Iran negotiations at roughly the same odds as Kermit the Frog winning the Tour de France.

The survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found... 61 percent (of Americans) say it's critical to stop Iran, even if it takes military action, while 24 percent say it's more important to avoid military action even if it means Iran becomes a nuclear power... But Americans are skeptical about the prospects - 64 percent say the talks will not succeed at getting Iran to stop its suspected work on a nuclear weapon while just 22 percent believe the talks will eventually pay off. [Source: McClatchey Newspapers]

On my way into work this morning, I heard David Harris parrot the overheated hysteria of Israel's Likud Party, framing Iran as the greatest threat to world peace since... Saddam Hussein. For Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, discovery of the anything-but-secret Iranian nuclear facility at Qom late last month calls for sanctions at least, and a new Mideast war front at best (for him).

Israel has called Iran its "existential threat" and Harris' group, well-connected in the webwork of what's become known as the Israel Lobby, has used every opportunity to push the United States to take out this nemesis. In this morning's broadcast, he legitimized part of his argument that Iran secretly is building nuclear weapons by citing the IAEA "annex" - a spurious addendum to last year's International Atomic Energy Agency assessment apparently originating from many of the same folks who stovepiped and cherry-picked Iraq "WMD" lies. It was hastily cooked up - a'la Niger "yellow cake" - to counter the agency's absolution of Iran's nuclear research.

And if fabrications don't work, there's always the bust-out spooky. In a Huffpo post last week Harris wrote:

...The Iranian leadership, worrisome enough with its messianic belief in hastening the coming of the Hidden Imam and reaching the End of Days, is on the ropes from revelations of fraud and state violence in connection with the June elections. Nothing like the possibility of cooking up a little foreign distraction to try to unite the people and divert attention from the regime's true nature.

Wow! With all our quandaries, at least we don't have arcane prophecy to deal with. At least, most of us. Harris and his cohorts - notably the ever-energetic chickenhawks at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee - constantly push for military action to destroy an Iranian weapons program dismissed by international inspectors and even our own National Intelligence Estimates; failing that, they want imposition of draconian sanctions they hope will spur the Persian republic to its own belligerence. It's an old, still-viable Likud/Lobby project: Enlist American power to remove or subdue Israel's enemies in the Mideast.

But now crises seem to be popping out all over. President Obama's case-hardened, battle-tested advisors, each of 'em able to bring in a shot-up crate on a wing and a prayer - Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton (oh, boy) - pump him with clashing expertise on what to do about the deteriorating Afghan theater.

In purely political terms - decisions aimed at issues here at home - Democrats want to steer clear of a troop escalation; they rightly smell "quagmire". Republicans want such a "surge" - since it will forever mark Afghanistan as "Obama's War", and should he decide against a troop increase, they can blame him for losing the flea-bitten pesthole to its homegrown warlords and terror fanatics. In his campaign last year, Obama branded Afghanistan as the key battleground in our Mideast debacle, so it may be the foreign-policy dealbreaker of his regime. As TPM itself notes this morning:

There are 68,000 troops there already, thanks in part to the change in strategy Obama announced in March. He said then he wanted to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al Qaeda and nearly doubled the troops deployed to the region as he started to implement a drawdown in Iraq. That was following up on a campaign promise since the president has said Afghanistan is the "war we need to win."

But wait... there's more! A new front could open with Pakistan, an old, reluctant ally and now regional bullseye for our killer-drone ordnance. The troubled, fractious country - in some ways, it makes Afghanistan look like Monaco - has The Bomb. It also, reportedly, plays host to Osama bin Ladin, and sports an intelligence apparatus as trustworthy as a new start-up fronted by Michael Hilton, Clark Rockefeller and Sir Allen Stanford.

State department and intelligence officials delivered the ultimatum to Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, last week as he visited the US for the United Nations' security council sessions and the G20 economic summit... Last week Anne Patterson, America's ambassador to Islamabad, told the Daily Telegraph that the (Pakistani) offensive in Swat was not targeting the insurgents posing the greatest danger to NATO forces in Afghanistan... An official told the Daily Telegraph: "...The Americans said 'If you don't take action, we will.'"

US unmanned drone strikes have so far been confined to Pakistan's federally administrated tribal border regions where Islamabad holds little sway. But attacks in or around Quetta, in Baluchistan, would strike deep into the Pakistan government's territory and are likely to cause a huge outcry in the country. [Source: Daily Telegraph]

If we pressed Pakistan, I doubt war would break out. On paper, at least, it could be absorbed simply in a coup accompli - a quiet, de facto overthrow of civilian rule with the aid militant pressure from Pakistan's hostile neighbor to the south. This week, India is bracing forces on its border, in what could be a glimpse of things to come:

To beef up air defence capabilities and react in quickest possible time along the international border with Pakistan, the Indian Air Force has decided to station all its MiG 29 squadrons at Adampur, the second largest Air Force base in the country.

India and Pakistan have hated each other since the 1948 partition, have fought a "generational war" for decades over Kashmir, and India is still smarting over that Pakistan-based terror attack in Mumbai in November. One advantage to an American alliance with India: They're not Muslim. Downside: Such geopolitical puppetry as assuming control of Pakistan by subverting its internal structure would damn-sure land us in a hornet's-nest insurgency that could make Fallujah look like our much promised, never-pranced "cakewalk".

So many conflicts, so little time.

...Or calm reflection.