Dems Must Decide Now on Response to Iran Conflict

Kevin Drum makes an excellent point in his "Political Animal" blog for Washington Monthly today. First he quotes a chilling outline by Zbigniew Brzezhinski of the likely scenario for military conflict with Iran, then he makes a compelling argument that Democratic leaders cannot wait until hostilites are imminent to figure out how to respond:

Pretty speeches about how you regret voting for the Iraq war are all very fine, but the real test is how you react to the next big marketing campaign for war. It's coming, it's going to seem plausible, and it's going to whip a lot of people into the usual frenzy. Any Democratic politician who hasn't thought about how they're going to deal with this is being willfully delusional.

He absolutely right. Opposition to the spread of U.S. military involvement to Iran must keep ahead of the groundwork for conflict we now see being laid (additional carrier force to the Gulf, new policy of shooting Iranian operatives in Iraq, seizing an Iranian diplomatic facility in Iran). Once the frenzied buildup to war is in full swing, it will be politically impossible to catch up.