Our huge gift to Iran

Christopher Hitchens in WSJ:

• To suffer all the consequences of being imperialistic, while acting with all the resolution and consistency and authority of, say, Belgium, is to have failed rather badly.
• Iran hands out missiles to a theocratic gang that was until recently mounting pro-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut, all the while spitting in the face of the U.N., the U.S. and the EU on the nuclear issue -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences.
• Syria openly parades the leader of Hamas in a Damascus hotel, while accepting Iranian largesse (and incidentally proving once again that "secular" Baathists can indeed collude full-time with religious fundamentalists), sends its death-squads to murder Lebanese politicians and journalists -- and is subjected to precisely no consequences.
• Syria and Iran send sophisticated explosives for the use of Shiite sectarians in Iraq, who employ them to murder American soldiers and Sunni civilians -- and are subjected to precisely no consequences.

Of course, we can't do anything to Iran and Syria because we are bogged down in Iraq. And Iran and Syria know that (indeed, have helped engineer it). That's why they are making their move.

But, oops, this suggests that wider violence in the Middle East is a result of our failure in Iraq. And Condi says that making such a connection would be "grotesque."