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Cry “Havoc” and let slip the dogs of war.
But what we know now would not necessarily have changed the calculus for preemption. Could the United States wait until weapons were actually produced by a country with the largest army in the region, the second-largest potential oil income, a record of having used these weapons against its own population and neighbors, and – according to the Sept. 11 commission – intelligence contact with al-Qaeda?
Nothing short of a military intervention could have exerted any political pressure on the region. It's the only solution, the only lesser among many evils.
The Middle East has thrust itself onto the American agenda in a spectacular way. In the past, the subject had intruded during periods of crisis or war, but never with the same level of urgency. Arab-Israeli wars, the oil shocks of the 1970s, the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979–80, terrorist attacks against the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991 all captured public attention for a time, then these concerns receded as the events passed.
Now, however, debates of the highest order about grand strategy, foreign policy, and America's proper role in world affairs are inextricably bound up with policies toward a broad region extending from North Africa to Pakistan and from Afghanistan to the southern end of the Persian Gulf.
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