Bush's legacy will pin Obama from the start

After Israel's ghastly disproportionate actions in Gaza, it was hardly shocking to read yesterday in the New York Times that our incorrigible ally was ready, willing and eager to preemptively blast Iran last year.

That almost inconceivably nitwitted act appears to have been imminent, for as the Times reported, Israel -- "out of its disbelief and anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that concluded that Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier" -- was randy to drop a few of our "bunker-bunking bombs ... on Iran's main nuclear complex."

So the Israeli Dr. Strangeloves asked to borrow some.

Oh, and by the way, they added, you wouldn't mind if we sort of flew over Iraq to get to Iran, would you?

As in: That's not much of a problem, is it? -- our carrying bombs over Shiite Iraq, in which you have stationed 140,000 crusading troops, to drop on Shiite Iran?

But, as I said, even though the entire idea was almost inconceivable to the rational mind, it was, these days, hardly shocking. Because Israel appears more than ready, willing and eager to further endanger its closest ally's national security only to protect its own.

Exactly why Israel thought that bombing Iran would indeed protect its national security is another story -- one as out of touch with global reality as its grossly disproportionate actions in Gaza. But we've come to expect this sort of thing from our errant friend, so the Times' expose was less than eye-popping.

One might have been shocked to first read, however, that it was President Bush who "deflected" Israel's "secret request" for both the bombs and Iraqi airspace. For that would -- would it not? -- seem rather neoconservatively lame?

But that, in the end, is what our boy did, even though the Times' story subtly suggested that Bush was initially hot for the idea. He "was convinced," wrote the Times with dark, past-tense implications, "by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view."

All I can say here is, God bless Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Furthermore -- and this is some really high-level strategic thinking stuff -- "Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved."

You think maybe there was a "possibility" of that? Yes, I know, it's mind-boggling, isn't it?

At any rate what Bush settled on as an alternative to manly action and in the way of temporarily placating Israel was the authorization of "more intensive covert operations actions aimed at Iran," which include "renewed American efforts to penetrate Iran’s nuclear supply chain abroad, along with new efforts ... to undermine electrical systems, computer systems and other networks on which Iran relies."

Kids stuff, when you come right down to it, which at least some American officials conceded. One, for instance, "dismissed" the covert operations as "science experiments," and others admitted to the Times that "the Iranians were already so close to achieving a weapons capacity that they were unlikely to be stopped."

Yet that's where Barack Obama's headaches begin. It's not likely that Israel will be willing to settle for an Iranian fait accompli in the nuclear realm, but the latter, it seems, is precisely what Bush's stubborn refusal to negotiate will accomplish.

What's more, Obama is now probably tethered to Bush's covert operations -- even as he seeks to talk with the operations' target -- for fear, as the Times put it, that "a decision to pull back [on those operations] could leave Mr. Obama vulnerable to charges that he is allowing Iran to speed ahead toward a nuclear capacity."

So Obama is left with irony heaped on paradox. His closest ally in the region has shown a boundless capacity to stick its finger in virtually everyone's eye -- our national security be damned -- yet his negotiating maneuverability with Iran is lethally constrained by domestic political pressures.

In short, Obama can either look like a wimp -- in which case Republicans come charging back in 2012, riding their national security hobbyhorse and threatening yet another neoconservative reign -- or he can risk a Middle East conflagration that will make the Iraq war look like a minor incursion.

Figure a way out of this one, Mr. Obama, and the Nobel Peace Prize is yours for sure, hands down, no doubt about it. And you'll have George W. Bush to thank.