Iran's style has not been to invade - but to "meddle"
When the Secular Sunni Saddam first came to power, the Fundamentalist Shias in Iran tried to mobilize the Shias in Iraq to destabilize Saddam.
The Shia Iranians saw potential "edge" in this destabilization attempt since the Shias had the population edge in Iraq. Saddam decides to go "preemptive" in 1980 against Iran to send a "message."
After 8 years and at least 500,000 (some say 1 million) combined casualties, Iran seemed to have trouble getting "the message" - despite all of Saddam's conventional and chemical assaults.
It is 2007 - twenty years later. And Iran still "meddles."
So what is the lesson? Killing 500,000 to 1 million Iranians is not enough to stop meddling.
You can deal with this meddling with military force. They have already shown that their combined casualty threshold is at least 1 million. What if we kill 2 million and their casualty threshold is actually closer to 5 million?
Do we kill 5 million Iranians because they are "meddling" in a war that we started on "shaky grounds" - at best?
If you know a soldier that may have been taken out by an Iranian supplied IED - you may say "yeah." But that is a personal vengeance "yeah" - not a "what is the best U.S. policy, 'yeah.' "
Joab - I think your heart may be in the right place. But war is not like a trade. There is rarely a nice neat conclusion via "capitulation." In Vietnam - the U.S. lost almost 60,000 troops. But we killed several hundred thousand if not over a million.
Did the VC capitulate?
Close a few times - but never all the way. So, no.
It is reported that the Russians have eliminated close to 25% of the Chechen population.
Capitulation? No.
Attrition? Yes.
But the Chechens started with only about 1 million. Iran has 70 million.
Capitulation is very difficult to achieve in warfare. For perspective, in WW2, it took a multi-year ass kicking by a handful of developed nations (The U.S., The U.K, Russia, Canada and several European allies) plus TWO nukes to get Germany and Japan to capitulate. Research the losses the Russians absorbed in the contribution to the German capitulation.
If you are still an advocate that the "throw down" needs to happen - then you have to be involved when it happens.