Hell hath no fury like a starchy WASP scorned

George Will's gettin' real testy with these neoconservatives. They best be not advising Israel to put Iran and Syria in its crosshairs:

"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Bashar Assad's regime does not fall after the Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?

As for the "healthy" repercussions that the Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that the Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation -- the bombing of Syria?

Neoconservatives of the John Podheretz and Charles Krauthammer ilk react with Pavlovian apoplexy whenever they use "appeasement" in their latest marching orders (its accompanying image is Neville Chamberlain, tapping his umbrella, as he returns from meeting Adolf Hitler in Munich). And the botched Iraq adventure should've been enough to make them pause when they consider jargon like "transformative effect."