Persian Gulf - should we stay or should we go now?

I'm trying to make sense of the current crisis in the Persian Gulf over the arrest of British soldiers who allegedly breached Iranian waters. This much we know is true. Ahmadinejad is a madman. However, our western leaders are only marginally more sane in their policies. Given the reckless disregard for international conventions and the ongoing pattern of deceit within our own and the UK government, it is difficult to accept at face value the denials that the British sailors and Marines did not in fact enter into Iran's territory.

And although it's been too easy to forget in the current mania over the attorney purge scandal, the Bush administration has been steadily attempting to build a case for military action against Iran for many months now. Unfortunately, it's not beyond the pale to speculate that Tony Blair, who is on his way out of power anyway, would be willing to provide such a casus belli at the behest of the White House.

As Glenn Greenwald points out, the excitement of such a prospect is palpable among the neo-con warmongers and the rhetoric coming from those quarters is uncomfortably similar to the language that paved the way into this disastrous occupation in the first place. One must never forget that the neo-cons operate under a single minded purpose to make real their nightmare of an endless war that results in world domination. In their rose-colored view there is no middle ground.

The distinct possibility of total annihilation doesn't enter their calculations and as Glenn notes, it's exactly this narrow perspective that allows no contingency plan for failure that puts us in the most danger. For all the debate on the ramifications of leaving Iraq, the single most important point is being ignored and that is the ramifications if we stay.

This latest hostage taking would seem to provide a clue to that danger and Americans would do well to heed it before we allow Bush to quietly sidle into opening a new front in his quest to salvage some meaningful result from the ill-fated invasion that never should have allowed to go forward in the first place.

Update: For more food for thought, see Cernig who, as usual, connects the dots beyond the obvious and comes up with a rather unpleasant picture.