If Only ....

Juan Cole daydreams a bit:

The biggest tragedy is that any sane person would have recognized after 9/11 that the US and the Shiites had a common enemy in Bin Laden and his ilk, and the US could have made up with Khatami's Iran. If the Iraq War had not happened, and the hardliners had not won the summer 2005 Iranian elections, the US position in the Muslim world would have been potentially strong by now. Instead, those great Islam scholars and political geniuses, Richard Perle and David Frum, managed to get Bush to put Iran in a cockeyed 'axis of evil.' It has been downhill ever since.

Sure, there are a few "if's" in his thoughts. But those assumptions seem to be of higher quality that the "if's" of the likes of Perle and Frum before launching the great Iraq adventure.