Don't Wanna Make Peace No More

New Guardian column from me on the release of the Iranian hostages and the peevish reactions of America's conservative pundits:

Good news, that is, for all except America's dwindling but still hardy band of war hawks, whose hopes of leveraging the crisis into the war they crave now appear dashed. Mario Loyola, formerly a contractor working for Doug Feith's policy shop in Don Rumsfeld's defense department, whined on National Review's blog that Britain may have promised Teheran not to cooperate with any unprovoked American air attacks that may or may not be planned. Such a turn "would be an enormous victory for the mullahs," he observed, "and it shouldn't be long before they start bragging about it." The deal is "a PR win for Iran," fretted its online editor, Katherine Jean-Lopez.

As Brian Beutler writes "Two days ago we had a situation in which America was very nearly at war with Iran and Iran was holding British soldiers captive. Today we have a situation in which America is perhaps slightly less than very nearly at war with Iran and Iran will be releasing those hostages. And this, in the conservative mind of today, is somehow a bad thing."