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Pipes' pipe dream of Iran war will save Obama presidency

Dan Pipes really really cares about Barack Obama.  The proof is in the helpful advice he proffered to “save” Obama’s presidency: bomb Iran.  In the blog world we call people like this “concern trolls,” people who offer advice out of faux concern for your reputation, but who really hate your guts.

As proof that the National Review must’ve had a very slow news and commentary day, they actually published this.  I’m not sure whether Pipes was drunk or on performance enhancing drugs when he wrote this fever dream of a column, How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran:

[Obama] needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.

…By eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat, Obama protects the homeland and sends a message to American’s friends and enemies.

…If the U.S.limited its strike to taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities and did not attempt any regime change, it would require few “boots on the ground” and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable.

…Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, and make the netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.

Slim Pickens: Dan Pipes in a cowboy hat

Not a word here about the price the U.S. would have to pay for such monumental lunacy.  For the Pipes of the world there’s never a price, only the pipes dream of  what could be if only we had the courage of our convictions.  This is Donny Rumsfeld devoid of any practical responsibility for outcomes or results.  It’s as if Pipes plays out all these fantasies in a computer simulation divorced from reality as we know it.

Love that 9/11 line: so all a failing president (not so fast Dan, Obama may fool you yet) has to do is orchestrate his very own 9/11.  But of course an Obama 9/11 in Iran would be a real 9/11 for Iran in terms of the suffering it would cause.  And that would be followed by another 9/11 here brought about by Iran’s thirst for revenge.  Then we’d have 9/11’s all around.  This starts to remind me of Nero fiddling as Rome burned or Slim Pickens riding down that thermonuclear warhead as if it was a rodeo bronco in Dr. Strangelove.  This man is a ghoul.  Even his picture makes him look damn scary.

Thanks to the intrepid Matt Duss for digging up this nugget.

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