We Will See

Hitchens letter to Obama in World Affairs Journal.

And there will be two temptations. The first is that of relying on your charm and multicultural appeal, with its somewhat risk-averse rhetoric and its tendency to emulsify basic disagreements in favor of the invocation of “common ground,” while the second is that of staging a Kennedy-esque “rite of passage” moment, in which you seek to show how tough you are, or can be. Both of these have their—not quite equal and not quite opposite, but nonetheless similar—dangers.

and

Having said, quietly but firmly, that the Iranian theocracy cannot be permitted to crash through every treaty and agreement and undertaking it has ever made or signed and declare itself a nuclear power, you will quite simply have to declare what the logical and probable consequences of this statement actually are. The Bush administration, despite its reputation for bellicosity, never managed to clarify the implications of its own statements on the matter. And it broke its own promise not to bequeath the problem to the next administration. You will have no such room for maneuver: the long-feared coincidence of a messianic regime with an apocalyptic weapon will either occur on your own watch or will be conclusively prevented from occurring. This is not a difference that can easily be split. Nor is it a question that can be subcontracted to Israel, since nobody will believe that if the Jewish state acts in any capacity it is acting independently of ourselves (or failing to make use of Iraqi airspace, which will come to the same thing). If I may make a tiny suggestion before quitting this topic it would be this: have somebody working full time on Sunni Arab responses to a Shiite theocratic nuclear capacity. We may have more allies than we think in this area. And begin work now on a contingency plan for when Iran threatens to occupy Bahrain, using its strategic nuclear ambiguity to discourage any coordinated international response à la Kuwait, and implying that a local Shiite majority confers upon it the right to alter international borders by force.

Like Sullivan, Hitchens is informed, passionate, and smart, but also not a great "predictor." After all, he thought Edwards would be the Democratic nominee. Yeah, seriously. So let's hope he's wrong about the mullah's eyes on nukes and Bahrain.