Belmont Club describes the growing war between the Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda in Iraq and the coming showdown with Iran .The author,Wretchard,   a keen  observer, notes that much of the Democrat opposition to Operation Iraqi Freedom is because the now minority party views it all through a prism of Bush hatred.

So great is this  hatred, he says, that it has left the Party without a  foreign policy or defense plan as we near a very critical junction in Iraq and now Iran. A hatred which critics observe keeps the party from looking beyond its own nose to see the danger of this attitude which sees the war on terror as but " a subset" on "the war against the GOP."

And my sense is that this accusation is largely true. One of the biggest factors of instability in the world today is that the other major political party in the United States has no 21st century foreign policy. Wikipedia, in its survey of American liberalism, notes that the Cold War was fought very much on a bipartisan basis.

To begin with, Vietnam was a "liberal war", part of the strategy of containment of Soviet Communism. In the 1960 presidential campaign, the liberal Kennedy was more hawkish on Southeast Asia than the more conservative Nixon. Although it can be argued that the war expanded only under the less liberal Johnson, there was enormous continuity of their cabinets.

Roosevelt, Truman, JFK. The party which dropped the A—bomb, fought the war in Korea, built the Minuteman, started the race to the moon were in the end represented by John Kerry, who began his acceptance to the nomination for Presidency in 2004 with these words (actual audio transcription):

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, so much. Thank you. Thank you, so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty. Thank you.

But insofar as the world was concerned his party was missing in action.

To be sure a number of leading Democrats have noted the danger of a nuclear armed Iran and the need to act. Unfortunately their warnings are virtually identical to those they made in the lead up to the Iraq war, and likely as solid as quicksand.

In the meantime, Israel has begun practicing to take out Iran's nuclear facilities through a combination of air strikes and commando raids, according to one report:

IAF pilots have completed their mission training and fighter jets have been prepared for an Israeli attack on Iran, the British Sunday Times reported.

The article reported that "the elite 69 strategic F—15 I squadron" had been equipped with weapons that will be tested in combat for the first time, and that two missile submarines were on standby: one in the Persian Gulf and the second in Haifa Bay.

The Times also said that special IDF forces would be helicoptered into Iran to take out targets that could not be destroyed in an air strike.

Iran's nuclear facilities, according to the newspaper report, are widely dispersed at some 40 underground sites throughout Iran, which would make any attack by Israel — or any other nation — exponentially more difficult that Israel's successful attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Col. [res] Ze'ev Raz, the former IAF pilot who led the Osirak mission, was quoted by the Times as saying, "What we now have is a lot of targets, which makes the operation much more difficult."

Raz believes an aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities is possible. There are many things that the IAF has done over the past few years that the public is not aware of, and it has made many important advances in mid—air refueling. Israel can strike the Iranian nuclear program, Raz said on Israel's Channel 1 TV's Politika program last week.

Perhaps instead of wasting their time trying to preserve the abortion absolutism of their fringes by trying to  block judicial nominees who they cannot stop with smears, the Democrats might retire from the cameras' view to the backroom and actually you know like, uh, come up with an acceptable position on Iran's swift movement toward becoming a nuclear nation and making good on its pledge to wipe out Israel. Or will they simply continue the course they've adopted of alienating voters by attacking the NSA surveillance program and holding up renewal of the Patriot Act?

Clarice Feldman   1 15 06