Best comment I have heard lately on attacking Iran's nuclear facilities

Planning on attacking Iran? "Better pack a lunch," advises
my friend, retired Lt. Col. Terry Daly, who knows a lot about war. His point was
that airstrikes alone against Iranian nuclear facilities wouldn't do much. If
you are going to attack Iran, you need to hit its ability to retaliate, and that
means that pretty soon you have a
big fat war on your hands.

I can't believe we
are discussing this. I am hearing lots
of depressing talk that there is a
good chance that Israel will attack
Iran sometime this year and that we will get sucked into the ensuing mess.
In some ways, there already is a kind of shadow
war under way with Iran -- Stuxnet, the drone intrusions, the recent
explosions and assassinations, the sanctions.

But for all that, I
just can't see Obama getting us involved in another Middle Eastern war. The American people certainly have no appetite
for it. I think he almost certainly
would lose reelection if a war broke out, because his base would fall apart
and the left would go into opposition.

At any rate, an article
by my CNAS colleague Colin Kahl that
went up last night on the website of Foreign
Affairs argues well that the "containment vs. attack" mindset is a false
dilemma. In fact, he says, even if you attacked Iran, you'd still have to
contain it afterward. So a series of airstrikes is not a substitute for
containment, but a prelude to it.