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Iran's Ahmadinejad predicts the collapse of Israel, the US, and the UK. So far, there's nothing to disprove that notion as Israel's leadership thinks that they can get a peace deal with genocidal terrorists who think nothing of blowing up Israelis and using toys as bombs and call for Israel's destruction as a basic part of their raison d'etre. The US has sent to the region Baker and Scowcroft who are arguing negotiations with Iran and Syria, both of whom are complicit in assisting the insurgents and terrorists causing so much trouble in Iraq and Lebanon. Then, you get yokels like Jonathan Chait who would like to see Saddam Hussein returned to power in the insane belief that Saddam would be able to restore stability to the country. Yes, a stability that included genocide (and on which he's standing trial for the murder of hundreds of thousands in the Anfal campaign).

Ahmadinejad understands that we are in a war to the death - it's a war of Islamists against the West, and if the US, Israelis, and UK are unwilling to fight for their own defense, there's no one else who will do the fighting for us.

Realists, if they are truly adherents to Hans Morgenthau's iteration of international affairs and the belief that states act in furtherance of their own power, would not engage the likes of Iran and Syria since those actions undermine US national security and power in the region in the long run. Those countries are enemies of the US and their interests are divergent from the US interests. They would rather see Iraq turned into a bloodbath since it serves Iranian and Syrian interests to not have a democratic country operating on their borders - one that has ties with the US. The threat of a stable Iraq on their borders is one they cannot countenance. Syria has shown that it cannot permit Lebanon to exist independently, and has repeatedly engaged in political assassination to undermine the government and thrown its support behind Hizbullah, which started a war with Israel from Lebanese territory.

Baker and Scowcroft are not realists in the true sense of the term since they're only thinking of what a deal can do for the US tomorrow, not what it will do for the US next week. They are operating from a short-term realpolitik that presupposes that what's good for the US in the short term is good for the US in the long term - and if it isn't, then the mess will be cleaned up by someone else.

The problem is that Islamists do not play by the same playbook the US does. The Islamists fight their conflicts in terms of decades and centuries. The US has shown that it cannot sustain its will to fight for more than a few years, and the Islamists have exploited this time and time again.