This guy a perfect example of why diplomacy founded on idealist yearning is hollow and unsustainable - Iran wants the bomb, pure and simple, it's central to their aspirations, and therefore there's only three things that are gonna happen here 1 regime change which possibly, but only possibly, modifies to our benefit the nature of their aspirations 2 they get the bomb 3 we stop them by whatever means from getting the bomb. There's nothing to be negotiated here - all there is is long term strategic calculation or submission.

It's as if Elizabeth had tried to send Walsingham to negotiate directly with Philip to put an end to that whole Armada thing - I'm sure ol' Francis would have recognized the futile idiocy of such a venture and instructed a few of his henchmen to put knives to royal bodice - there was nothing to be negotiated, Philip wanted what he wanted - you either renounce your heresy and become a vassal of Spain or you make ready your defenses.

Are we gonna fret over some academic who likes Persian poetry feeling all sad about how foolish people can be - or are we gonna defend ourselves?

"In a war for democracy, you couldn't have generals acting like Prussians"

This may be a wished for state but by no means a necessary one. Since America is the first and only 'true' democracy to field a powerful military it seems we want to or need to identify our civic and martial selves too closely, possibly as a means of reassuring ourselves that we fight the good fight or maybe just as a means of encouraging a 'free' people to surrender that freedom for the sake of a 'just' cause - whatever, the point is a democracy and the force it expresses in defense of its beliefs are not identical - in many ways the military expression represents a suspension of those ideals it is asked to defend - and it's hard to see how a viable defense could be mounted any other way. Of course, the line is blurry, not fixed - it's right that we ask our military to be a harsh but necessary force for 'good' and act accordingly - but that admonition is as much rhetorical as practical and therefore must be applied discretely otherwise one will be led into a false assumption like you've made here, Mr Ricks, thinking that a democracy and the military raised to defend it are and must be one in the same thing. The sage of the first democracy, Plato, understood there was often an unnatural balance between the disparate needs of the state and the state itself - his philosopher King, an admirer of Sparta, would have ordered children to march to war with their fathers so that they could learn this most vital of trades - now, would that amount to an enlightened albeit extreme acknowledgement of cruel necessity, or the ramblings of a barbarian?

"... yes, but the 'generals are disposable' logic can be turned around to suggest Obama has made a mistake in making Petraeus now seem absolutely necessary - and if this has been done for PR's sake, which appears to be the case... after all, isn't the message here that there are so few generals in the US military capable of running a COIN that we we're forced to demote our 'best' general out of CENTCOM?... in that case, it seems to me the table is being set for some serious troubles down the road. Did Obama give Petraeus assurances re withdrawals, troop increases, Eikenberry, putting a muzzle on Biden etc etc? What if he did but Obama backtracks? Or he didn't but Petraeus, now the 'necessary' general whose reputation hangs in the balance, has no choice but to act as if he has the latitude?... Much of the press want to see calling on Petraeus as a clever move by Obama - but seems to me you can just as easily characterize it as an expression of weakness and shallow, short sighted thinking..."