Or much better yet, not at all. Bill Lind considers the latest neocon push for war with Iran:
Last week’s most important news event received remarkably little press. According to the February 14 New York Times, shortly after landing in Poland for a major international conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed truth.
No sooner had he landed that the prime minister’s Twitter account announced “an open meeting with representatives of leading Arab countries, that are sitting down together with Israel in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”
In case anyone doubts that this was a case of committing truth, the Times reported that “An hour later, the Twitter posting was changed to ‘advance the common interest of combating Iran.’”
So Israel wants war with Iran, and so do several Arab states with loud voices in Washington, especially Saudi Arabia. From an American perspective, the problem is that both the Israelis and the Saudis will want the United States to fight the war for them.
This promises to be the Iraq war all over again. American neocons were major players then in devising a new strategy for the destruction of every Arab country that could be a threat to the Jewish state. Iraq was first on the list. But then, as now, America was supposed to do the fighting, take the casualties and pay the bill. The neocons worked on a president who had little understanding of foreign policy (though Trump is a great deal brighter than W.) to do their bidding, and he fell for it. The result was a disaster for America and the region (and, ironically, Israel). We lost more than 5000 young Americans dead, tens of thousands wounded, trillions of dollars wasted, and the Iraqi state destroyed, to the benefit of Fourth Generation, non-state entities such as Al Qaeda and ISIS that are real threats to the U.S. and Israel, which Saddam’s Iraq was not. We also destroyed the main regional power that was blocking Iran’s quest for regional dominance.
Now, we are supposed to make up for that blunder by going to war with Iran. The result would likely be even worse.
When defeat is disastrous and victory arguably even worse, the wise move is to not go to war at all.