Oh Jesus...

... I was trying to work on a longer, better-thought-out post about this, and I'll try and come up with one later, but I just saw something that made me desire some quick action. The thesis of the hypothetical post is that the risk in a second Bush term is less that he'll deliberately start a new war than that some of the none-too-swift folks out there who think they've devised a brilliant plan for "dealing with" Iran that involves neither a war nor negotiations will start taking actions-short-of-war that nevertheless lead us into war. At any rate, for a good example check out this Instapundit post about Israel's covert killing of Hamas dude Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil in Damascus where he speculates: "Perhaps some of the Iranian mullahs who are supporting Sadr might be next?" I don't want to get into all the ins-and-outs of this, but that's a truly terrible idea Professor Reynolds has come up with, the exact sort of terrible idea we need to worry about. Steps that escalate the conflict and raise the hostility level without achieving anything substantive.