Neoconservatives are great observers of war and
warriors, though they are sometimes not in complete agreement about the numbering
of the conflicts that they send other people's sons and daughters to fight.
Norman Podhoretz, the patriarch of the neocons, believes that the Cold War was
World War III and that the U.S. is now fighting World War IV against "Islamofascism."
He intends to expand World War IV by slating Iran as the next domino to fall
to America's military might. Podhoretz undoubtedly sees the current global conflict
as something that is good and necessary, both containable and winnable, but
as his judgment on Iraq was fallible, his prediction of Iran's rapid destruction
is also unreliable. It might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could
play out if the Iranians don't roll over and surrender at the first whiff of
grapeshot.