Letter From Dinnerjacket:

Earlier this week, our fearless leader received a letter from Iranian leader Ahmadinejad (or Imadinnerjacket or Dinnerjacket since that seems to be his prevailing fashion statement). True to form, Bush hid behind the skirt of Condi Rice and rejected the letter out of hand.

I am no fan of Dinnerjacket. He strikes me as someone who is a few sandwiches short of a picnic (not unlike our leader in that regard) if you catch my drift. However, Bush said that he wants to give diplomacy a real chance to resolve the standoff over Iran's nuclear program. Diplomacy, by its very nature, involves talking to the other side. We are in a standoff with Iran in a situation that could potentially involve nuclear weapons and we have no direct lines of communications with Tehran. We have troops across the border in Iraq and Afghanistan and most likely have special forces and intelligence units operating inside Iran itself. The potential for a lost platoon from either side sparking a shooting war is unreal.

Out of this mess, Dinnerjacket sends Bush this letter. While Dinnerjacket did not directly spell out a solution to the current standoff, he did attempt to communicate to Bush where he was coming from. While this letter forms no basis for a solution, it could have formed the basis for at least some sort of dialogue between the two leaders.

Let's face it, due to Bush's stupid invasion of Iraq and the failure to build up our ground forces to adequately handle their current mission, let alone a new threat, we are left with only naval and air forces to resolve this matter militarily. Of course, about 25 years ago, someone names Saddam started a war with Iran with limited objectives. Eight years later and a million dead on both sides, the war ended in a stalemate with chemical and biological weapons used against the Iranians. This is what made Sy Herch's article in the New Yorker in which a nuclear first strike is being considered seems so real and scary. Even a best case scenario in which an airstrike with conventional weapons is successful and we manage to keep them from making Iraq worse will result in oil going over $120/barrel for a brief time, causing a global recession. There is a very good chance the Iranians could block the Straits of Hormuz for a time, taking all the Persian Gulf oil off the market and causing a spike to $200/barrel (and people wonder why I invested in the Canadian oil sands two years ago and gold about 8 months ago). Of course, Iraq will probably explode and we will not have the troop strength needed to secure Iran and Iraq.

A few posts ago I said that W couldn't carry Dick Nixon's jock strap. When Nixon was in a jam in Viet Nam, he went to Moscow and Beijing. China was the Iran of that era. When war broke out in the Middle East, Nixon sent Kissinger to negotiate territorial concessions and separation of force agreements between the Israelis, Egyptians and Syrians that ultimately lead to the Camp David accords. Where have you gone Richard Nixon? It is a national tragedy that in times like these, our fate is in the hand of such incompetent lightweights such as Bush, Cheney and Rice. All they care about is keeping their Neocon wet dream alive. May God help us all!