Tom Nichols

Going to answer with something Ken Edelman said after Iraq.

He said, because there was a, you may have remembered, David, that some years ago there was a piece in Vanity Fair called Neoculpa, and it was a group of conservatives who had pushed for the second Gulf War who were now asked their second thoughts.

It was people like Pearl and Edelman and Wolfowitz and others.

And

Edelman said, look, your cause can be absolutely right, but that you have to put it in the drawer that says can't do for now.

If we really decided that this was the moment because of the regime's weakness to say this is the time that we excise this malignancy from the planetary body politic, then do it.

by assembling your allies, by explaining your cause to the American people, by getting authorization of some kind from Congress.

And by the way, let me, as a side note here, I was one of the people who, my boss in 1991, Senator John Hines, he wanted to invoke the War Powers Act.

And I felt so strongly about presidential prerogative here that I actually

kind of strong-armed my boss about why that's a bad idea.

He and a group of Republicans were going to enact it.

And I said, don't do this.

This is the... Against Gulf War I. Bush 41.

This was Gulf I in 19... Yeah, this was in the winter of 1990.

And I said, don't do it because I think it would be dangerous.

So, you know, if you're going to do it,

I would say I still would be worried about this team and their motives doing it, but if somehow we have reached a national consensus, which we have not, and perhaps even something like an international consensus, maybe just our top five or six allies, as we did in 2003, to say this is the time, then fine, do it.

This is not the way.

Just showing up and dropping a lot of steel on a lot of Iranian targets

and then saying, well, we'll see what happens.