Obama visited Israel today and made the logical and politically necessary speech of calling a nuclear-armed Iran a "grave threat".  He's right, of course, in the sense that any nuclear-armed country (including Israel and India) are a grave threat.  But still, this sounds a little too reminiscent of Bush's "grave and gathering" alliterative characterization of pre-shitstorm Iraq.

Obama, contrary to the shouting Fox commentators, has always been a centrist.  That's ok with me.  In part, because I think he's the good kind of centrist and not the Joe Lieberman, Tom Friedman neo-liberal kind of centrist.  But I was hoping for a steadier hand in Middle Eastern affairs.  Bush set a very high bar for non-involvement (read: complete capitulation) in Middle Eastern affairs.  So even if Obama manages to eat a falafal or two he'll have greater involvement than Bush.  Nevertheless, we can't have another four years of axis-of-evil nonsense.

We know that a nuclear-armed Iran is a dangerous thing.  But an Iran with nuclear power done in cooperation with French and Russian envoys is not scary at all.  The only logical goal is to bring Iran into the fold.  Help them grow their economy and show them the benefits of living in the 21st century.  The venue for Obama's speech today probably prevented him from saying anything concilliatory about Iran.  But, frankly, I would take silence over another parsed sentence which inevitably leads to more dead civilians.