Support for Another War

I was speaking to a friend last weekend about politics, as usual, and he brought up Iran. He's retired career Army, now working for a school system doing IT. His position was that we need to" bomb the hell out of them," and that if we did, we could kill the nuclear program and topple the regime. My response was to google the following picture:


I showed him the infamous Strait, told him the shipping lane for deepwater vessels was 2-3 miles wide, and that 30-40% of the world's oil production flowed through it. I asked him what had happened when a few percentage points of supply fell off in America after Katrina, and he didn't seem to see the significance of the question. "Sure, oil prices will go up, but it will be temporary," he said. Oy.

Now, I'm a big believer in the near omnipotence of the US military, having been schooled in the First Gulf War, but after experiencing bitter reality in Iraq, how can you hold the position in your head that "taking out Iran would be no big deal"? Leading up to the Iraq War, I was convinced of its inevitability. But with Iran, the American people at large must have better sense, right? "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you... ifuma can't get fooled again," is my position.