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OC Register – Mark Steyn: A leader of the free world not to be feared

The tireless Anne Bayefsky reported this week that the administration’s latest response to Iran’s nuclear provocations is to “start shifting our focus to the track of pressure.” It’s a good thing the diplomatic cable is a mostly metaphorical concept these days because, priced per word, Washington’s are getting expensive. Starting to shift our focus to the track of pressure isn’t the same as “pressure.” Nor is it even a first step on “the track of pressure.” Nor isit even a commitment to “focus” on “the track of pressure.” But it does represent a clear start to shifting the administration’s focus from whatever it’s focusing on right now to focusing on the possibility of shifting its focus to the track of pressure with the possible goal, once it’s focused on shifting to the track of pressure, of eventually applying some. Not now. Not next month. But maybe at some point sometime, once we’ve figured out what meaningless gestures the Russians and Chinese would agree not to veto.

Like Europe, the Obama administration’s “realists” have decided that, if the alternative is summoning up the will to prevent a nuclear Iran, it’s easier to live with it. The realpolitik crowd’s biggest turn-on among their many peculiar fetishes is “stability,” yet they’re stringing along with what will be the single biggest destabilizing factor in geopolitics in a generation.

Sigh.