Senior American officials themselves were struggling to explain why the Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, would orchestrate such a risky attack in so amateurish a manner.
It only seems amateurish because we detected it and stopped them. How would we have reacted to the idea that half-trained pilots and half-witted muscle could capture four planes and actually fly them to targets. We'd have lots of discussions of how the World Trade Center could withstand that kind of impact and how fire suppression systems would douse the flames. And what are the odds that the Pentagon doesn't have air defenses? Further, who thinks we couldn't have evacuated Congress well before those idiots could even get close? Amateurs.
The fact is, Iran committed an act of war by trying to attack us. That should be what we focus on. Not whether it succeeded or whether it was a good plan or whether Iran will try it again. This incident justifies war against Iran, as Gerecht writes:
The Obama administration will be tempted to respond against Iran with further unilateral and multilateral sanctions. More sanctions aren't a bad idea—targeted sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and the sale of gasoline made from Iranian crude can hurt Tehran financially. But they will not scare it. The White House needs to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don't, we are asking for it.
In the 1980s and '90s, the U.S. failed to take Secretary of State George Shultz's wise counsel after Khomeini's minions bombed us in Lebanon. We didn't make terrorism a casus belli, instead treating it as a crime, only lobbing a few missiles at Afghan rock huts and a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. But we should treat it as a casus belli. The price we will pay now will surely be less than the price we will pay later.
Don't forget that a quarter of our casualties in Iraq can be linked to Shia death squads armed, manned, and supported by Iran (And yes, the Bush administration deserves some blame for failing to make Iran pay for that. But remember too that he would have been impeached by the loyal opposition if he'd done that, so give him a break and spread the blame a little wider. And sure, Reagan didn't make Iran pay, but he did have the Soviet Union as our primary focus, recall.). Iran has been waging war on us since they took our embassy, and we've yet to make them pay.
Make Iran pay. We should declare war on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and dare the rest of the Iranian government to stand in our way to protect them. Seize UAE island held by Iran. Hammer IRGC forces and leadership. And if the Iranian military tries to defend them, hammer their air defense and naval assets. That would have the advantage of getting rid of Iranian defenses to either an American or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
After our misguided outreach of an open hand to Iran, held out even as Iran crushed the Persian Spring of 2009, failed to move Iran one bit, can the Obama administration say that they haven't done enough to "understand" these blood thirsty fanatics?
Let Iran get away with this "amateurish" attack and Iran will keep coming at us. One day they'll seem brilliant and devious.
And then there is the impact on others who see Iran get away with this outrage. Will it be open season on America and Americans?
