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(Senator Chris Dodd will be here today at 11:30 am ET/8:30 am PT to answer questions about his efforts to block retroactive telecom immunity from the upcoming FISA bill.  Please join us — jh)

Reality breaks through the calling of the loons…if only for a moment:

…The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?…

Of course, who wants a little reality when you can throw caution and common sense to the wind:

Normally, the role of government—of civilization—is to curb our sense of personal license when civilized society is under pressure from anger and fear. Government is supposed to put a brake on cynical, self-serving calculation, especially at times of great danger and confusion. Nobody knows that better than professional soldiers, who are trained to understand the laws of society and of war. But the core coterie around Bush and Cheney, who never were soldiers, pushed for war with Iraq at all costs and as an end to almost all constraints….

In the fiction of “Deliverance,” Ed’s sanity and bravery eventually save the day when he climbs out of the gorge. What I wonder is whether in the real-world crisis of Iraq there is enough sanity and bravery in Washington to deliver us from the evil that’s been created in Iraq. Unfortunately it doesn’t look that way. Whether we listen to the Republicans or the Democrats, the woman candidate for president or the men, all the major contenders remain reluctant to challenge the ersatz standards of strength set by the Bush administration. Sure, they snipe at each other, but none want to appear weak on national security. So we’re left with “Law, what law? Plan, what plan?” And we continue to float down the river as if without a paddle, unable and unwilling to climb out, with much more violence and in all probability worse humiliations yet to come.

Jeebus. I’m gonna need more coffee. Topic while I’m getting a refill: the perversion of Burkean philosophy to justify illogical lunacy that is far from “conservative” as it is traditionally defined. Discuss. Or just go read TBogg…

(Photo of a loon decoy via ndg. H/T to Froomkin for the first link, and Laura Rozen for the second.)

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