General John Abizaid, the longest serving CentCom commander in history, says we can live with a nuclear Iran. "I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear...Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well." He continued: "War, in the state-to-state sense, in that part of the region would be devastating for everybody, and we should avoid it — in my mind — to every extent that we can."
Abizaid's remarks are pretty clearly meant to blunt chatter coming out of the White House on the need for war with Iran. And they're important. One of the pernicious dynamics in the rhetoric around Iran is that the Bush administration's hawkishness has merged with the Democratic candidates' cowardice ("all options are on the table," when most mean "no, I won't bomb Iran, as I'm not an idiot") to create an impression, well-expressed by Ken Baer here, that no serious experts believe we should rule out war with Iran. As Abizaid, and many others, show, that's simply not true.
