CHANGING THE SUBJECT.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT. Mercifully, TNR's third editorial hinting we should start a war with Iran but not quite saying so spares us the "ruthless" or "ruthlessly serious" talk. Instead:

At this moment, therefore, it is important to remember that Iran is not only Israel's problem. It is also America's problem. Indeed, it is the West's problem. There is no figure in the world right now--not Osama bin Laden, not Nasrallah, not Ayman Al Zawahiri, not the Sunni insurgency or the Shia death squads in Iraq, not the cells, Al Qaeda or otherwise, in any European or American city--that represents the Islamist danger more perfectly, with greater ideological and physical force, than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But how so? I think there are a number of serious analytical errors here. But before even getting dragged into the details of this, it's simply worth identifying and noting an alarming trend -- an effort through the use of various rhetorical devices to redefine the main strategic goal of the United States away from securing the country against al-Qaeda and associated movements in favor of curbing the growing influence of Iran. There's nothing wrong with arguing for a shift in priorities, but people arguing that ought to be made to be honest about the fact that this is what they're doing -- saying we should drop this al-Qaeda business in favor of worrying about Iran. But why should we do that? And why Iran rather than, say, China?

Instead, they're attempting a sleight-of-hand whereby we say "we're fighting al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda is Islamist, so we're fighting Islamists, Iran is Islamist, so we're fighting Iran." That's silly. "Islamist" is a mighty vague term. It encompasses everything from socially conservative democratic political parties to would-be totalitarians; groups with local agendas and groups with regional or global ones; Shiite groups and Sunni groups; an al-Qaeda movement that has already targeted the American homeland for attack and that has repeatedly threatened to do so again and an Iranian dictatorship that's done neither.

--Matthew Yglesias