The Wages of Forebearance

Wretchard has posted a description of our policy failure in the way we have confronted Iran's meddling in Iraq. He thinks that the policy has changed at last. I'm wondering what the situation in the Middle East would be like today if we had responded to the hostage crisis more vigorously in 1979. I left a comment detailing my outrageous proposal on how we should have handled it. It just makes me MAD to think about it.