Bryan from Hot Air has a magnificent post up questioning what Iranian ascendancy, in large part fueled by their proxy army Hezbollah, means to the world and the future. As Britain capitulates to Iran on the diplomatic front, and our politicians ignore the White House and legitimize state sponsors of terror, the question of what the future holds for America should weigh heavily on all our minds. Here’s a taste:

“We may be seeing a re-primitivizing of war away from the organized, structured state-based model to something more feudal and harder to control. Hezbollah is a creature of Iran and Syria, but what’s to stop another Osama bin Laden from using his wealth to build another private terror army? What’s to stop 10 or 20 bin Ladens from doing that, and what’s to stop rogue states from helping them out? Nothing that I can see, and with the West divided over how even to deal with bin Laden, there isn’t likely to be a solution to the problem any time soon. The combination of that and the march of technology will make the non-state armies more lethal than their predecessors, and their lack of hard connections to nations and states will make them more apt to kill, not less, because their masters can wash their own hands of the blood. And because they can freelance without fearing that they’ll be keelhauled before the ICC. Civilians lose in this scenario, as the proxy army model destroys the wall between citizens and soldiers. Everyone’s a target, because no one’s held accountable.

In some ways, it’s all a reversion back to the days of pirates on the open seas. In Iran’s case, literally. But in the bad old days, pirates operates at the periphery of civilization, and for the most part civlization eradicated them (when civilized countries weren’t using pirates against each other). Iran’s shadow pirates operate all over the world, even in our own capitals, and their purpose isn’t primarily financial, but ideological.”

I definitely won’t sleep soundly tonight.