Ardent pursuit of the peripheral.

Nuclear bombs have been made small enough to be man portable. It is a large leap of faith to think that such miniaturization is beyond the technical capability of hostile nuclear scientists and technicians of smaller powers controlling and sponsoring putatively non-state terrorists. Our borders are already demonstrably susceptible to ground, air, and water penetration. And, Muslim crazies would love to be able to detonate a nuclear bomb in a major population center of the U.S.

Therefore, given these assertions, preventing such enemies from acquiring nuclear bomb making materials would appear to be an incredibly high priority national objective.

Assuming the logic of this, one would think that successfully eliminating Iraq and Libya as sources of nuclear material would be but Phase I in the campaign against the Axis of Evil, Phase II operation against Iran and Pakistan to follow.

If this is simplistic and a too-cavalier argument in favor of an expensive and deadly enterprise, so be it. But that’s just an objection to what I think should be Phase II based on short reflection here in my living room. The nature and reality of the threat are not disputable, however, as is the unacceptability of sucking our collective thumb for the foreseeable future and hoping that the threat will just go away.

The indirectness and fecklessness of Mr. Bush’s strategy in Iraq are painfully obvious. From a proper concern for development of WMD he went to “nation building.” He was an odd man, however decent, because he never seemed capable of articulating a coherent national strategy or making a reasonable distinction between enemy and friend.

Here's Nicholas D. Kristof's interesting and accurate take on Mr. Bush:

That is what I find baffling: an utter failure of the political process. The Bush administration responded aggressively on military fronts after 9/11, and in November 2003, Mr. Bush observed, "The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the dictators who aid them." But the White House has insisted on tackling the most peripheral elements of the W.M.D. threat, like Iraq, while largely ignoring the central threat, nuclear proliferation. The upshot is that the risk that a nuclear explosion will devastate an American city is greater now than it was during the cold war, and it's growing.

Mr. Obama evinces no superior insight or coherence, more's the pity, given that he (and his advisers) have had the luxury of the seven plus years since 9/11 to do something other than play kissy face with our enemies -- Obama's sole objective at this point.

The Iranian and N. Korean centrifuges were running full tilt all the time Obama was reading his lines in Cairo. He's not hearing them any more than Bush did.

"An American Hiroshima." By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, 8/11/04.