Coll is an interesting guy who actually does something that I also do in making the BBC his homepage on the Internet! Coll is right about the limited effectiveness of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The IDF would face many hurdles in that any such strike would require in flight refueling of which they have limited capability, limited numbers (if any at all) of deep penetration ordnance, target selection issues since the number and variety of targets exceeds the numbers of aircraft available for a first strike, and a very limited ability to conduct bomb follow-up damage assessment. The IDF has a superb Air Force but it is not a long-range strategic air force capable of a sustained effort. The IDF’s ability to wage an air campaign against Iran must be wholly based upon the willingness of the United States to resource such an operation.

Additionally, if such a strike were launched then there are operations that for instance Hezbollah could undertake which would by necessity divert aircraft to suppression roles in Lebanon thus weakening the forces available to direct against Iran. Even the USAF with its enormous assets realizes that a true meaningful strategic strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be more a campaign than a few strikes. Still, Israel has the ability to launch some sort of attack but it’s meaning would likely be more a political gesture than an effective military operation. Likely, the Israelis hope is that the inevitable blowback from such an operation would also hit the Americans sufficiently hard that it would ensnarl us into a de facto cooperative effort with Israel. And that scenario remains problematic.

Well, if the Obama administration's main policy towards the Middle East is re-engagement (as David Ignatius states), then they haven't done a very good job. The President's outreach to the Iranians and the Syrians has proved illustrious thus far, with Iran continuing to arm terrorist groups in the region and Syria doing pretty much the same thing. Plus, the Iranian-Syrian alliance is still up and running. In fact, it is even stronger than before, with both countries signing an agreement that lets citizens travel freely between the two without travel restrictions.

Even with our allies in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, the United States has not been that effective. The democracy promotion that the President laid out in Cairo last June is still a long way off, and authoritarianism is as strong as ever. The funny thing is that this is not necessarily a bad thing for the United States. Look what happeend when Condi Rice argued for parliamentary elections in the Palestinian Territories....Hamas won control.

Criticizing this policy does not mean that I am against it. I loudly applaud Obama's effort to bridge the gap with Syria by announcing the first U.S. to Damascus in five years. We should talk with Bashar al-Assad, namely because the previous policy of isolation only improved the status of the Syria in the Arab world. It's not going to be easy either way.

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

Has been awful since 9/11. He refuses to acknowledge his wrong and irresponsible rah-rah-ing of the Iraq fiasco (as Tom put it in some book or other) or his dependence on various out-of-touch academics when promoting his neo-liberal POV around developing economies (to read Friedman you'd think India was a rich country).

But he's right on this one, as is Ignatius - one of the few big-time columnists who actually bothers to respond to readers emails.

Nice to see that the desire for the US to have an "open" relationship with Israel and maybe go out on a date with some other nation-state once in a while is meeting with approval amongst the pundits.

Ignatius is also correct when he complains about how this White House - supposedly so conscious of how to play the media and in the use of "new" media seems to be failing to explain what its intentions are.

I' m sure most readers are tired of this inside the beltway BS. Here is the short truth. Israel has a long-term policy of ethnic cleansing of the West Bank with the continual building of squatter cities on Arab land it seized in 1967. The rest of the world objects, yet AIPAC and its allies are so powerful in DC that the USA has blocked a solution. Israel even has its own US Senator, Joe Lieberman. The USA could impose a settlement by withholding aid or even joining a UN embargo.

Every sane person knows this, but no one will discuss it, especially those in DC, who pretend the issue is somehow "very complex." Meanwhile, the bulldozers keep working on the West Bank.

I've actually read all of his books...and let me say this...read one and you have read them all. I feel like I am taking crazy pills, but his books are like Derrik Zoolander's looks, all the same.
I talked to a guy in India on the phone who is IMing a guy in Bangladesh who bought his computer that was made in China...blah blah blah.
On the bright side, I hear "Blue Steel" is going to blow us all away.

Good old Tom just about proved my point in his NYT column this weekend. I swear I have read this paragraph 1000 times from him."

"If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it. I can use Amazon.com to handle fulfillment. I can use freelancer.com to find someone to do my logo and manage my backroom. And I can do all this at incredibly low prices. The one thing that is not a commodity and never will be is that spark of an idea. And this Intel dinner was all about our best sparklers."