Iran has spent eight years killing Americans in Iraq. We responded by doing nothing. Attacking the source of the problem might have jeopardized Iraq’s fragile new government, whose leading factions are beholden to Tehran, a complication we chose to paper over. In fact, even as democracy-project enthusiasts crowed about Iraq’s purported evolution into a key American ally against the jihad, the Bush administration acceded to Maliki’s demand that Iraq not be used as a staging ground for U.S. operations against other nations (translation: against Iran, the kingpin of the jihad). It seems the only country we’d be permitted to attack from Iraq is Israel. And that’s no joke: Obama adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski actually suggested that the U.S. would shoot Israeli bombers down over Iraq if they dared try to take out Iran’s ripening nuclear arsenal…

In the days after 9/11, President Bush outlined the only plan that had a chance of achieving victory: Hunt terrorists down wherever they operate and treat terror-abetting regimes as terrorists. That should have been the mullahs’ death knell. Instead, we’ve tried to fight a war the enemy prosecutes globally as if it were happening in only two countries, neither of them Iran.

Putting aside the merits of a Marshall Plan analogue for the Muslim Middle East, the original Marshall Plan was undertaken only after total victory was achieved over America’s enemies. There could be no free, independent, pro-American Europe without Normandy and D-Day and Hitler’s annihilation. If you leave the enemy undisturbed while indulging in self-congratulation over democracy and the Arab Spring, you’re choreographing a farce. I’d call it “Springtime for Khamenei,” except the tragic joke is on us.