Coffee spoons and looney tunes

In a moment of confusion, this UK Labour MP says that Hamas' victory is all Ariel Sharon's fault for pulling out of Gaza, while hawk Daniel Pipes says that the reason for democracy's failure is because the ideological underpinnings of extremist Islam have not yet been discredited. The Financial Times endorses sanctions as a step towards reining in democratically-elected anti-democrats across the Middle East. In my humble opinion, sanctions are half-measures that only inflame the populace and give more power to the mosque rather than affecting change in the halls of power. Dick Cheney seems to be unenthusiastic about sanctions himself, here in a Wall St. Journal interview:

We also discussed foreign policy with Mr. Cheney, the highest-level official to serve in both the Bush administration that left Saddam Hussein in power and the one that overthrew him. What changed? "I think that 9/11 was a watershed event," he says. "It became clear that we were up against an adversary who, with a relatively small number of people, could come together and mount a devastating attack against the United States." This brought into focus the danger of proliferation: "The ultimate threat now would be a group of al Qaeda in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon."

By 9/11, Mr. Cheney notes, "we had 10 years of experience with Saddam Hussein defying the international community and refusing to come into compliance with U.N. sanctions . . . and, based upon the best evidence that everybody had at the point, proceeding with his WMD programs." Saddam also supported international terrorism, "everything from $25,000 payments for the family of suicide bombers to a home for Abu Nidal and Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

This newspaper had argued since 1991 for regime change in Iraq, so Mr. Cheney had a sympathetic audience when he made this case. But we wondered why the current administration is taking a much more cautious approach to Iran, a sponsor of terrorism that is eagerly pursuing nuclear weapons. The vice president disputed our premise. "We tried for a long time . . . to resolve the questions with respect to Iraq peacefully, and through international organizations and mechanisms. . . . We didn't immediately jump to Operation Iraqi Freedom." Yet given that those efforts failed, what makes him think the same approach will work with Iran?

"We're not the only ones who've been hit since 9/11," Mr. Cheney responds. "We're not the only ones who'd be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran that was a state sponsor of terror. And the international community needs to come together and find effective ways of dealing with this to make certain that that situation doesn't arise." Fair enough, but one could have said that about Iraq anytime between 1991 and 2003.

Four years ago tomorrow, President Bush delivered his first State of the Union Address, in which he famously declared that Iraq and Iran, along with North Korea, made up an "axis of evil." In light of the divergent ways in which the administration has approached the three countries, I asked Mr. Cheney, was it a mistake to lump them together like this?

No, he said, it wasn't. "There are ways to approach different problems, and I think we've got to be sophisticated enough to figure out which one is most likely to work." After all, "you wouldn't want to accuse us of being simplistic."

The administration needs to outline a plan soon, because the neo-con foreign policy community is starting to get impatient. Ergo, this week's must-see-TV: The Anatomy of September 11, Flight 93, and the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Oh, and rasslin', South Park, Family Guy, the Office, and Flip This House.