potato chips and watching bomb camera videos when a world crisis arises. It had been too long since American infantry marched on the sovereign soil of a foreign nation to shoot bullets in anger, and obviously the world had forgotten how good we are at doing that when the call comes.

By those criteria, Iraq was a success. The only problem is that occupied Iraq is descending into civil war, and to hold the oil, we have to tolerate our troops being shot at every day.

So along comes Iran. Yet another militant Islamic leader shows up threatening us and refusing to back down when it comes to enriching uranium for the purpose of making nuclear weapons. A nation sitting on vast supplies of oil, with oil delivery infrastructure that would be difficult to rebuild in a timely enough manner to avoid economic disaster to the U.S.

What, then, is a superpower to do about Iran? The answer partially comes from the Iraq experience. We made our point in Iraq. If we want to walk into Tehran and box the ears of the Iranian leaders, we can get that done between breakfast and lunch, assuming the Russians and Chinese stand idly by. If we want to seize the oil, we can. But then do we want to set up permanent camp in Iran and plan on a colonial government for the foreseeable future?

And what of Russia and China? We know economics is more an engine of war than national pride or national objectives. A cynic would say we're not really shooting the M-16 for liberty and justice for all, we're shooting it for the Dow Jones average. Similarly, the Russians and Chinese need Iran, so they wouldn't take kindly to us rolling our tanks into downtown Tehran. Do we REALLY want a bunch of midnight conference calls going on between Moscow and Beijing discussing what to do about the “American Problem”?

Bear in mind that one of those nations, the one that invented rockets and gunpowder, may be a future adversary of ours. When and if that time comes, we'll be happy to demonstrate what American courage, military ingenuity and marksmanship can do. But that's not an item we need on today's to-do list.

The answer to the question, “whatever shall we do about Iran?” is this -- listen attentively at the CIA top secret briefing, and find out how long CIA think it will be until the Iranians have offensive nuclear capability. Take a few percentage points off that estimate for safety, and that's the amount of time America has to play around with diplomacy. Diplomacy of the kind described as soothingly saying “nice doggy” while we slowly reach for a big rock. If CIA says we have ten years, then for the next seven we can rant and rave and throw shoes in the U.N. Security Council meetings. Obviously, CIA's estimates need to be constantly updated, and Iran must remain a priority intelligence target with the agency's best on the task. And the Iranian Invasion War Plan needs to be simulation tested and the subject of intense training of U.S. forces. But until Iran's bomb gets closer, let's keep the gun in the holster.

But on the morning the CIA top secret briefing officer informs the president that the current assessment is that Iran will have a live bomb within a few months, it's time to implement the plan to take out their weapons capability. Air power, cruise missiles, and satellite-to-surface weapons should be employed, and if the bombsite is sufficiently hardened against conventional air assault, then we should (gasp!) use one of our own hydrogen bombs. Five or ten megatons ought to do the trick quite nicely. After all, we could always claim that the Iranians had an unfortunate nuclear accident on the graveyard shift. Play with fire and you might get burned.

At that point I suppose I could remove the ancient, worn and scratched “NUKE IRAN” bumper sticker from my equally worn and scratched 1980 Corvette.

Meanwhile, we should see about taking the Russians to the woodshed over arming the Iranians and helping them enrich uranium.

And while we're waiting, let's not forget to keep a weather eye toward China. Our generals and admirals and War College pupils should be memorizing the philosophy of Sun Tzu. They'll need it, but hopefully not too soon.