In his latest essay, Leslie Gelb, through rhetorical sleight of hand, makes an attempt to appear as the voice of reason in the ‘debate’ before an actual attack on Iran, that has taken up so much political space and time, as a preoccupation of policy makers, and a committed position of psychotic Neo-Conservative policy intellectuals. Mr. Gelb is an establishment policy maker and thinker fully aligned with the Clintons, nothing surprising here. How seriously should we take Mr. Gelb’s plea for an informed debate about an attack on Iran? This debate and the manufactured hysteria that will accompany it is also nothing surprising, in the long tradition that is an exploitable constant in American politics. Mr. Romney, in his campaign rhetoric, will be banking on his ability to manipulate the fear of the Iranian Satan, in the minds of ‘low information voters’ and even serious well informed Republican, Independent and some Democratic voters. Perhaps, the question of an attack on Iran could be the great defining issue of the Presidential campaign of 2012, making the nagging questions of the American Economy and the questions raised by the Occupy Wall Street movement appear trivial to a great crusade against our mortal enemy, that would very probably lead to a world wide conflict.

The question of Mr. Gelb’s position on an attack on Iran remains an unknown since his own thought remains in abeyance, in this provocative position paper, aimed at the serious reader of The Daily Beast. Mr. Gelb is no public moralist, but simply put, is a reliable source of something resembling serious policy debate, pitched at the level of a Tina Brown edited publication.

Political Cynic