Impressive

That's my reaction to Mark Helprin who was on Hugh Hewitt's show this afternoon. Soft spoken, his assessments of Iran and Iraq are not what I'd like to believe, but they aren't based on the medias' conventional wisdom either. All in all, it was a worrying analysis, making me feel that we need to deal with Iran sooner than later. He's no fan of Don Rumsfeld, but he doesn't come across as someone nursing an old grudge, like most of the retired generals who've been "speaking out." I can see his arguments and they seem persuasive, although I'm not convinced that trying to really occupy Iraq in the traditional sense, would have succeeded politically, but I feel for the first time that there's a well-thought out alternative.