"Bush is Playing Chess" —Dick Morris

As Dick Morris put it so brilliantly prior to the election on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor,

"Bush is playing chess and Kerry is playing checkers."

That statement was referring to the election, of course, but may be applicable to the Iran nuclear situaion as well. Despite all the rhetoric from the left about what an idiot George W. Bush is, he keeps beating them at every turn. If he is such an idiot, why is it he keeps winning?

In retrospect, the Iraq war looks like a brilliant chess move, the second such move after taking out al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Obviously, there were clear, immediate, and justified reasons for those actions separately, but when the security and future stability of the region are also taken into account, the overarching strategy reveals itself.

Does anyone doubt that Iran would have pursued a nuclear weapons program regardless of the coalition invasion of Iraq? Of course they would have, no matter what happened in Iraq. Was anyone even talking seriously about Iran and the potential for their development of nuclear weapons BEFORE the invasion of Iraq? The coalition certainly did Iraq a favor in removing Saddam, and has freed them to build weapons for potential use on Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and even parts of southeastern Europe. Given the Iranian nuclear situation, we feel better having American armed forces, particularly American air power, now in position on both sides of Iran, along with carrier-based air power in the Persian Gulf.