All the other stuff was fine

Glenn Reynolds does one of his above-the-fray sighs about Iran:

I think our big error was in not preempting Iran in 1979. Everything since has been an effort to rectify that dreadful mistake.

Note the trick of passing off partisan shite as world-weary "analysis." Somehow, it's all Jimmy Carter's fault -- installing the Shah, sticking with him too long, not invading in 1979 to overthrow a popular revolution, cutting arms deals with the Ayatollahs in the 1980s, supporting Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, getting rid of Iran's two biggest regional enemies (the Taliban and Saddam), and in so doing, exhausting any ground-based option for dealing with Iran now. Jimmy Carter is a very bad man.