The U.S. brass unanimously opposes any Israeli and/or U.S. attack against Iran's nuclear installations. It's better to coexist than face the aftermath of such an attack.

The use of force in someone else's country usually ends badly, says Mikhail Gorbachev, whose own country found that out when it foundered in Afghanistan. And Iran cannot be ignored, he would tell Obama.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the proverbial canary in the mine. Gunning down 12 soldiers and one civilian, and wounding 30 was not a random act of violence by an Army psychiatrist who was slated to deploy to Afghanistan, an evil war in his mind, where American infidels are killing good Muslims.

Al-Qaida doesn't need commando-steeled volunteers to attack the United States and its allies chances are, it already has selected highly motivated, brainwashed zealots among the graduates of Pakistan's madrassas.

Paying Afghanistan's principal tribal chiefs to detach them from the Taliban would cost several hundreds of millions of dollars, not the tens of billions that are being wasted on an unwinnable war, according to a wise veteran Arab intelligence hand.