Iran: Are We Already At War?

Robert Tracinski has a disturbing article today on RealClearPolitics, entitled, "The Buildup to a U.S.-Iran War."

Here is his first paragraph:

For more than a year now, I have been arguing that war with Iran is inevitable, that our only choice is how long we wait to fight it, and that the only question is what cost we will suffer for putting off the necessary confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Despite the title, the content of the article makes it clear that the author thinks Iran is already at war with us, whether we choose to believe it and respond to it or not. This sounds frighteningly like what happened to America with al-Qaeda during the 90's; they were at war with us, but we were blissfully unaware of it. The author points out several indications of Iran's war with us:

1) Their threat to bomb Israel if either the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran.

2) The speculation that Israel's recent bombing raid in Syria targeted a facility where Iran and Syria, with the help of North Korea, were building a nuclear weapon.

3) The AP report that a recent explosion in Syria was a factory being used to build chemical weapons, including VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard gas.

4) American arrests of Iranian Republican Guards Corps' Qods Force members in Iraq, where they are, according to General Petraeus' testimony, "training, arming, funding, and in some cases directing" Iraqi insurgents.

I would add to Mr. Tracinski's list a couple of other evidences, including Ahmahdinejad's clearly war-oriented rhetoric, which sounds suspiciously like that of Osama bin Laden, and the display of Iran's military might which took place immediately before Ahmahdinejad's visit to the U.S. to speak at Columbia University. I've seen displays like this before - most often on TV in old World War II films, when Hitler held them to build support for the Axis powers, but also in Iraq throughout the reign of Saddam Hussein, when he was at war with Iran and with the United States, and in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They appear to be a mechanism used by brutal dictatorships when at war with democracies, to intimidate both their own people and those they are fighting against. That Iran's president feels this display appropriate immediately before his visit here suggests he and his government believe they are at war with us.

Robert Tracinski concludes:

The coming of the war with Iran has very little to do with our intentions and has everything to do with the enemy's intentions. Our only choice is how we will respond. Will we continue to evade the need to confront this threat--or will we finally begin to fight back?

I think the thing that disturbs me most about this is that, unlike the Iraq war, fighting a war with Iran is likely to be ugly. Iran is much bigger than Iraq, and much more difficult to fight. And we are already a divided people, with far too many of us willing to surrender easily for the sake of our own comfort and convenience. If we are going to fight Iran, we will have to do it together, recognizing that failure to do so may mean we will be overtaken by the Islamic jihad. And with the elections looming, I find it hard to believe that the American people will be willing to set aside our creature comforts and do the difficult work of fighting an enemy who is determined to be at war with us.