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04/30/2003 Archived Entry: "Desert Shame Redux"

DON'T STOP BEFORE BAGHDAD: Michael Leeden argues today that if the U.S. wants a free Iran and Syria, it's going to have to work hard for it. Not doing so, he writes, is akin to America halting its forces before it got to Baghdad during the first Gulf War.

Life is not often like that. If we want a free Iran and a free Syria — and we must, if we really want to win the war against terror — we will have to fight for it. Not militarily, in these cases, but certainly politically. Even as we prepared to invade Iraq, the Iranian and Syrian dictators increased their bloody repression, desperately trying to stave off their own day of reckoning. And, of course, the Iranians sent contradictory messages, alternately cursing us as agents of the devil, only to turn around and sing sweet songs of "better relations" even as they pursued a nuclear program that is on the verge of fulfillment (Revolutionary Guards officers were recently informed that a nuclear test is in the works later this summer).

Read on.