Good luck
The Washington Post argues, today, that the next step in Iran, after what, to their credit, they acknowledge is the clear failure of the current strategy for the 3 years it has been tried, is, of course...to do more of the same.

Meanwhile, 2005 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, says the obvious:

"For his part, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has begun arguing that the Security Council should simply concede that its three legally binding, unanimous resolutions ordering an end to Iranian enrichment have been "overtaken by events" and that it should give up the effort to enforce them."

And the post villifies ElBaradei as "an unelected international civil servant whose mission is to implement the decisions of the Security Council -- and who proposes to destroy the council's authority by having it simply drop binding resolutions."

You know, I have to have respect for any public servant who puts independent, empirical analysis above the partisan whims of either the liberal Washington Post, convinced of ElBaradei's suggestion that "any chance to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy would be lost" (apparently oblivious to the fact that their current suggestion means more of the same strategy that has all too clearly failed, for those, like ElBaradei and myself, who are not trying to defend the failure but just face it) or the conservative Bush Administration, who has tried to repeatedly remove ElBaradei from his post when he didn't give them the advice they wanted to hear on Iran, Iraq or wherever in the world they wanted to dominate events.

This is the same public servant who, a year before the International Atomic Energy Agency he represents won the Nobel Peace Prize, was treated thusly by President George Bush:

"The United States helped install ElBaradei in his job eight years ago, but his refusal in 2003 to confirm White House allegations that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program lost ElBaradei the American support he had enjoyed.

When he began openly resisting U.S. calls to intensify pressure on Iran, Washington responded by trying to prevent him from taking a third term as agency director. But the effort, led by John R. Bolton, who was in charge of nuclear issues during President Bush's first term, was abandoned in June when no candidate emerged to challenge ElBaradei."

That's my kind of public servant. And was for the world. Except when his honesty challenged any ideology's sacred cows, that is.

This is all I have to say about this, anymore, for the Washington Post, the Bush Administration and every liberal and conservative who is having a hard time facing up to the failure of force to accomplish your ends.

When you're done failing and you want to face the failure more honestly and stop scapegoating Mohamed ElBaradei for the country's failure to face its aggressive, controlling, and otherwise illiberal ways, there are folks like ElBaradei and myself who might have one or two suggestions to get us moving in a better direction.

In the meantime, good luck. You're gonna need it.

Love,
Ben