I've never been a big fan of those alternative-history novels in which Hitler wins World War II or Richard Nixon becomes president for life, but recent events have me pondering a hideous prospect: What if John McCain had defeated Barack Obama in 2008? The answer, as indicated by McCain's recent posturing, is that we'd be struggling with a lot more than an economic downturn; we'd probably be in costly and unwinnable wars not just in Afghanistan but in Syria and Iran.

McCain has not only forgotten the lessons of his own generation's war in Vietnam, he's forgotten what this generation learned in Iraq. He is eager not just for Israel to bomb Iran, which would set off a devastating regional conflict likely to drag in the United States, but for Washington to bomb Syria. On Monday, he became the first U.S. senator to call for air strikes on that country, and during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting Wednesday, he admonished Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for failing to show leadership by "focusing on diplomatic and political approaches rather than a military intervention."

Panetta didn't take this sitting down; he said the administration was working to build international consensus, as it did in Libya, rather than taking unilateral action, and that as Defense secretary he has to know "what the mission is. I've got to make very sure we know whether we can achieve that mission, what price and whether or not it will make matters better or worse."

That's the part McCain either doesn't understand or doesn't care to discuss. U.S. military intervention in Syria in any form -- whether airstrikes or arming rebels -- would be extraordinarily risky. Syria is a powder keg of ethnic and sectarian factions with networks in neighboring countries; foreign intervention there would set off a proxy war that would further destabilize the entire Middle East.

To name just a few of the complications: In Lebanon, the politically powerful and heavily armed Hezbollah is committed to upholding the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and it's not unrealistic to think that a broader civil war in Syria could spread to its fragile neighbor. If Assad should fall, it would almost certainly lead to reprisals, and likely atrocities, against Syria's minority Alawite community, the regime's most important domestic backers. The Syrian opposition that U.S. hawks would like to arm is an unknown quantity made up of Islamic fundamentalists and other groups that aren't necessarily sympathetic to U.S. interests. Taking out Syria's air defenses would be nowhere near as simple as taking out Libya's and would require a massive U.S. military commitment; it also presents risks that it would prompt Assad to use his country's stockpile of chemical weapons, which is said to be 100 times the size of Libya's.

I could go on, but I doubt I could say it better than the International Crisis Group, which wrote in a recent report:

Frustrated and lacking a viable political option, Western officials and analysts have toyed with a series of often half-baked ideas, from initiating direct military attacks to establishing safe havens, humanitarian corridors or so-called no-kill zones. All these would require some form of outside military intervention by regime foes that would more than likely intensify involvement by its allies. Even if they were to provoke the regime's collapse, that in itself would do nothing to resolve the manifold problems bequeathed by the conflict: security services and their civilian proxies increasingly gone rogue; deepening communal tensions; and a highly fragmented opposition.

McCain's hawkishness is starting to turn off most of his fellow Republicans, and even if he had won the White House, he might not have been able to fulfill his neocon nation-building fantasies. Fortunately, it will take an alternative-fiction writer, rather than a journalist, to imagine the harm he could have done.

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Photo: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) talks to the press Monday after calling for air strikes on Syria. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press

So this is getting seriously stupid, all the campaign-season rhetoric about Iran.

First, President Obama, speaking Sunday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, says:

"I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power. A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort to impose crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

"Iran's leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I've made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests."

Sounds clear and tough-guy enough, right?

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Well, apparently not to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who, The Times reported from Snellville, Ga., reacted to Obama's speech this way:

"If Barack Obama is reelected, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the world will change," Romney told a crowd of more than a 1,000 people at a pancake breakfast that his campaign hosted in this Atlanta suburb.

When an 11-year-old boy asked the candidate how he would keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Romney said Obama had not imposed "crippling sanctions against Iran." "He's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and in fact in our hand, and that it's unacceptable to America for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

"I will have those military options. I will take those crippling sanctions and put them into place," he said. "And I will speak out to the Iranian people of the peril of them becoming nuclear …. I'm not willing to allow your generation to have to worry about a threat from Iran or anyone else that nuclear material be used against Americans.”

Oh, and have some more pancakes, young fellow. I want you big and strong for when I send you off to war!

But seriously. Obama said all options were on the table -- and Romney still called him out. What is this, the second-grade playground?

C'mon, fellows, stop and think a minute. If you don't want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, does it make sense to keep bombarding it with threats of military action? I mean, I'm pretty sure they've got the picture by now. 

Do you really have to make a bunch of paranoid types more paranoid? Isn't this why Israel says it fears Iran -- because it has threatened to destroy Israel?

So how do all of these threats to attack Iran make it want the bomb less?

The bottom line: This is political gamesmanship at its worst. Romney and the GOP candidates court pro-Israel votes by taking an ultra-hard line on Iran. Which forces Obama to hew to a hard line as well.

But it's a very dangerous game. It could lead to war. It could get lots of people killed.

And yes, for me, it's personal too: I have two sons.One just turned 18, at which point you are -- yes, still -- required to sign up with the Selective Service System.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of hearing pandering politicians cast about for votes by offering up the lives of other people's kids in the name of national security.

Take Romney's sons: Did he offer them up as cannon fodder? Check out this New York Times story in 2007, the last time he ran, when he was asked about whether they had served in the military:

Mr. Romney expressed appreciation for the country's "volunteer army" and said "that's the way we're going to keep it." He explained his sons had made different career choices in life and had not chosen to serve in the military, but he mentioned a niece whose husband, he said, had just been called up by the National Guard ….

But he wound up his response with this: "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation, and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I’d be a great president. My son, Josh, bought the family Winnebago and has visited 99 counties, most of them with his three kids and his wife. And I respect that and respect all of those in the way they serve this great country."

Yes, well, Mitt, the campaign trail is a rugged place, that's for sure, especially in a Winnebago.

But ask the fathers and mothers and husbands and wives of the thousands of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan about real war.

And then, just maybe, you -- and, frankly, Obama too -- might decide to take your finger off the trigger.

And quit playing politics with the lives of American kids.

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-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: Mitt Romney speaks Sunday at a pancake breakfast at Brookwood High School in Snellville, Ga., outside Atlanta. Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

So what have the Syrians done wrong?

When rebels in Libya revolted against the regime of Moammar Kadafi last year, the West rushed in with air power when it appeared that the insurgents would be slaughtered by government forces.

And the airstrikes continued to the bloody end -- Kadafi's bloody death included.

But in Syria, antigovernment protesters have been fighting -- and dying -- for months trying to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad.

So where's the NATO air power?  I mean, what's a rebel group got to do for a few 500-pound bombs? Are the lives of Syrian rebels less important than those in Libya?

The cold, hard answer is yes. Syria's rebels aren’t going to get NATO's help.

Why? 

As we used to say in the Cold War days, it's realpolitik.

In truth, what happened in Libya is the exception in foreign affairs.  Just when you think a precedent has been set, there hasn't.

An example? Nuclear weapons.  North Korea -- all Western bluster aside -– is allowed to have the bomb. But the fact that Iran is trying to acquire one brings talk of World War III.

It's much the same with Libya and Syria. The West could afford to challenge Kadafi, who in the end had few outside friends.  But Syria, and Assad, have powerful outside allies, including, as we saw this week, Russia and China.  And, of course, Iran.

Overt Western action to promote regime change in Syria, then, risks a wider conflict.  The Libya action didn't pose as big a gamble.

For an excellent update on the situation in Syria, read Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter’s story this week.  As they point out, the situation in Syria is more like that in Saddam Hussein's Iraq than in Kadafi's Libya. And we know how Iraq turned out.

So is the world forced to stand by while Assad butchers his own people?

Of course not. There are diplomatic tools available. The Obama administration and others are using them.

But that's cold comfort for the people in Syria fighting -– and being killed daily by -- an oppressive regime.

Unfortunately, it's the only comfort they're likely to get.

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Photo: Two Syrians evacuate an injured fellow opposition member in the northwestern city of Idlib this month. Credit: Associated Press

Not surprisingly, there was a good deal of pandering at Thursday’s Republican presidential debate. With the exception of Ron Paul,  the candidates took a hard line on easing relations with Cuba, a sop to Florida's die-hard anti-Castro Cubans.

But the worst panderer was Mitt Romney on the subject of the Middle East.

"I believe the best way to have peace in the Middle East is not for us to vacillate and to appease, but is to say we stand with our friend Israel,” he said. “We are committed to a Jewish state in Israel; we will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally Israel.”

“Not an inch of difference”?  Even if an ultra-right Israeli government abandons any effort to negotiate with the Palestinians?" Or annexes the West Bank? Or bombs Iran when the U.S. thought it was counterproductive?

Romney is essentially giving the Israeli government -– any Israeli government -– veto power over U.S. policy in the Middle East. Of course, a President Romney would never actually execute that policy. There is a long tradition of presidential candidates taking extreme pro-Israel positions on the campaign trail and, once in office, gravitating to the policy of past administrations, Republican and Democratic, of criticizing Israel  (albeit mildly) when appropriate.

Yet another reason for American voters, regardless of their view on Israel, to descend into cynicism.

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Photo: Mitt Romney speaks during the Florida Republican Presidential debate Jan. 26 at the University of North Florida. Credit: Paul J. Richards /AFP/Getty Images

I guess now we can call it the "Iran rule."

You know: It's the rule that says the United States must go to war with a country or risk loosing another Hitler on the world.

In 2003, of course, it was the "Iraq rule." Remember how George W. Bush and other administration officials and conservatives justified the invasion of Iraq by comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler?

Although, to be fair, Bush was just following in the tracks of his father, who also invoked the Hitler comparison in deciding to oust Hussein from Kuwait in the 1990 Persian Gulf War.

If I didn't know better, I'd say too many U.S. policymakers have seen "The Boys From Brazil" and assumed it was a documentary.

Today's Hitler, though, is -- take your pick -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the mullahs who rule Iran. And they want Iran to be a nuclear power. And they must be stopped. And the U.S., of course, must do the stopping. And all options must be on the table, including military action.

Who says so?

Well, except for Ron Paul, every Republican running for president, for starters. Here's Mitt Romney:

"If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon," Romney stated unequivocally. "And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

But this is a bipartisan stance, it appears. As The Times quoted Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Sunday:

"Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon?  No," Panetta said. "But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, 'Do not develop a nuclear weapon.' That's a red line for us."

"I think they need to know that ... if they take that step, that they're going to get stopped," Panetta said, adding that he was not taking any options off the table.

Gosh, fellows, maybe you could all take a break from the Xbox and Call of Duty for a bit?  You know, get out for some fresh air?

Because honestly, I think the American people are just a bit tired of playing Hitler whack-a-mole.

And this is starting to give me 2003 deja vu: Everyone knows the Iranians are building a bomb, just like everyone knew Saddam Hussein was pursuing a bomb.

Except he wasn't. 

And even if the Iranians are, what makes everyone so sure they'd use it?

Ah, you say, just check what Ahmadinejad has said.

OK. Check what Romney just said. Check what Panetta just said. Does that mean we're automatically going to war?

If we went to war every time someone said something bellicose, we'd be going to war a lot -- uh, I mean a lot more.

We didn't want the Soviet Union to get the bomb, but it did. We didn't want China to get the bomb, but it did. Ditto North Korea. And Pakistan.

Each time, some argued -- as some, especially Israel, argue now about Iran -- that it would be Armageddon if the bad guys got the bomb.

Well, the United States has lived for more than 60 years with thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at it.

It's no picnic, but we're still here.

Plus, sanctions against Iran are starting to take their toll. They might work. At any rate, they don't cost nearly as much as a military action.

So why don't we give the war talk a rest. Hitler, after all, is dead.

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Photo: A U.S. sailor in a safety boat observes a boarding team from the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Kidd after Iranian fishermen were rescued from pirates in the Arabian Sea. Credit: U.S. Navy

Stop the debates, I want to get off.

Sure, the Republican presidential debates were fun at first. I mean, Rick Perry's "oops" moment alone -- when he forgot the name of one of three Cabinet-level departments he would do away with as president -- was worth the price of admission.

And they actually did what they were supposed to do: They separated the wheat (Mitt Romney) from the chaff (everyone else).

But really, must we go on? At this point even political junkies are beginning to search the phonebook for a nice comfy rehab center in Malibu.

Like a bad stand-up comic who just won't surrender the mike, we're left with stuff like this:

--Perry, during Saturday's ABC Yahoo debate, saying he "would send troops back into Iraq" if elected president. (An idea that gives a whole new meaning to "dumb." At this point, Perry is like a down-on-his-luck gambler in Vegas, desperately putting chips on red in hopes of winning his money back.)

--Rick Santorum, given a chance to make his case for why he should be president, saying that it was not the economy but Iran that was the most pressing issue facing the United States. (Note to Santorum: See James Carville re "It's the economy, stupid!) 

--Newt Gingrich, addressing the issue of gay marriage, calling marriage a sacrament long recognized in history as being between a man and a woman. (Or, in his case, between a man and several women, though not all at once -- sort of.)

Good grief. When we started, didn't every pundit say that this election would turn on the economy? Even the Republicans said so -- gleefully, given that the economy was in the tank last year.

So why are these guys talking about Iraq, Iran and gay marriage? And not only talking about those issues but saying really dumb things in the process?

Listen, guys, here's a tip, and it won't cost you a thing: Most voters will gladly trade you two Middle East countries and a "who cares?" social issue for job security and a raise.

But these candidates are like punch-drunk fighters. They're all Rocky Balboas at this point.

Please, someone, anyone, throw in the towel before someone really gets hurt.

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Photo: GOP presidential candidates on the debate stage Sunday in Concord, N.H. Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

Is our California democracy more democratic than Iraq's? Than Tunisia's?

If you answered "yes, of course," does that mean that a proposed ballot measure I'll describe in a moment will fly with Californians?

I doubt it, but here's the back story:

Iraq's constitution, adopted in 2005, reserves 25% of parliamentary seats for women, to thwart the Islamists who might hold more influence in the post-Saddam Hussein government and who don't want women in public political roles at all.

And in Tunisia, the rules require that half the names on a ballot be women's, and that the names be alternated by gender so people can't do straight-ticket guy voting. The assembly that's writing Tunisia's constitution will probably end up with a document putting women in about one-third of Tunisia's assembly.

So what does any of this have to do with California politics?

A proposed initiative is collecting signatures to place on the ballot a state constitutional amendment to double the number of legislators in Sacramento -- and require one female, one male.

This would mean 160 Assembly members and 80 state Senators, and some very crowded women's bathrooms.

When Rose Ann Vuich was elected California's first female state Senator in 1976, there was no bathroom for women legislators -- only for men. They had to convert a closet into a bathroom, and it's still called "The Rose Room."

(Vuich's campaign prefigured Sarah Palin's by more than 30 years; Vuich dinged her GOP opponent for supporting a "freeway to nowhere.") And every day, several times a day, whenever one of her colleagues addressed the Senate's membership as "gentlemen," Vuich rang a bell on her desk to remind them that she was there -- and, implicitly, that more women would follow her.

There are two things about this measure I don't expect Californians to like. The first is minting more politicians. Californians don't think much of the ones they have already. Doubling their number is doubling down on dislike.

And the second -- a 50-50 ratio between men and women legislators -- well, as desperately as California and the nation need more women in visible and official positions of authority, voters would balk at being told to do it.

California was the first state to send two women senators to D.C. Maine, Washington and New Hampshire followed suit. There's now a grand total of -- are you ready? -- 17 women in the U.S. Senate. Women are just a tidge over half the U.S. population but only 17% of the U.S. Senate.

The breakthrough year for women in the Senate was 1992, the Year of the Woman, after the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings showed an all-male committee questioning female witnesses.

California's equal-representation proposal is the brainchild of someone named B.C. Keith. The secretary of state's office refers to B.C. Keith with the pronoun "her," so I have to assume Keith's a woman.

I also have to think that, like British blockbuster women writers J.K. Rowling and P.D. James, B.C. Keith understands that a more gender-neutral name, using initials only rather than female first names, can make a difference to male readers or voters, whether you're selling a novel or a political idea. It's a sad state of monogrammed affairs.

Given that the 2010 elections meant fewer women in Congress than there had been in 20 years, is it possible that women candidates, like women authors, or maybe even women in business or science, feel they've got a better shot at succeeding if they, to use the Shakespeare line, feel constrained to "unsex" themselves in their names?

Keith's measure isn't likely to go anywhere -- but what if there's a chance that a D.G. Feinstein or a H.R. Clinton or a M.S. Curie would have a better shot at success than a Dianne or a Hillary or a Marie? If so, maybe there's a little something we can learn from the Tunisians after all.

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Top photo: Sen. Dianne Feinstein is seen on Aug. 24, 2005 at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. Credit: Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times. Bottom photo: Rose Ann Vuich is shown in 1976. Credit: Associated Press

Tom Hayden wrote in an Op-Ed Dec. 16 about the role of "determined peace activists" in ending the war in Iraq, including  "one who embraced their cause and became president": Barack Obama. Hayden called Obama's opposition to the war -- which Obama, then an Illinois state senator, made clear in an announcement in October 2002 in Chicago --  a "brave stance for an ambitious politician."

Hayden went on to call Obama "the first president to campaign on a promise to end an ongoing American war." That assertion, however, is not true, and it has been corrected for the record. As a reader pointed out, Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigned in 1952 on ending the Korean War. And Richard M. Nixon promised to end the  Vietnam War during his successful presidential campaign in 1968.

Hayden, however, stands by the idea that Obama has played a singular role among recent presidents. In an email, he clarified his point:

Dwight D. Eisenhower promised to end the war in Korea, it is true, but he left the Korean peninsula partitioned and more than 25,000 American troops occupying the South until the present time. Those U.S. troops are pledged to fight again if hostilities erupt between the two Koreas.

Richard M. Nixon promised to end the Vietnam War, but his "secret plan" for peace led to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, escalated the bombing of North Vietnam, and resulted in tens of thousands of more American casualties until the war was lost to North Vietnam years after Nixon took office.

By contrast, Obama pulled the last of 170,000 American troops out of Iraq on schedule this month. True, he is leaving 16,000 personnel at the huge U.S. Embassy for "defensive" purposes, but they are hardly about to initiate another war. Iraq itself may erupt in sectarian war once again, but that calamity cannot be prevented by another U.S. military occupation, only by effective diplomacy with Shiite countries like Iran, with whom we have no diplomatic relations.

Compared to Eisenhower and Nixon, Obama has ended the war he pledged to end.

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Photo: President Obama greets troops as they step off a plane on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on Dec. 20 during a ceremony marking the return of the United States Forces-Iraq Colors and the end of the war in Iraq. Credit: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press 

CNN and two think tanks have limited Tuesday night's Republican presidential candidates' debate to national security and foreign policy, although the questioners and some of the candidates may try to shoehorn economic and budget policy into the discussion.

The focus will be especially on Herman "Libya?" Cain, but watch Rick Perry to see if he's been coached to say anything other than that he would let Israel bomb Iran. Speaking of Israel, look for the refrain that President Obama is somehow less than devoted to the Jewish state, despite a statement from Israel's defense minister to the contrary.

Another question is likely to be what the candidates think of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will be interesting to see how many of the panelists will echo Jon Huntsman Jr.'s support for a larger withdrawal from Afghanistan. Or will the compulsion to bash Obama lead them to take a more hawkish posture -- for example, by griping about the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq?

Finally, the buildup of U.S. forces in Australia may give the candidates an opening to rattle sabers over China.

The positions the candidates take will be less important than whether they master the basic facts of foreign policy. With the exception of Newt Gingrich, that is very much up in the air.

Note: Join us here on the Opinion L.A. blog during the debate for quick takes from columnist @DoyleMcManus and editorial writer @MichaelMcGough3.

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Want a brief history of the Iraq War?  Here it is, in two quotes:

"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."  — Vice President Dick Cheney, "Meet the Press," Sunday, March 16, 2003.

"I was so happy to hear that the Americans are leaving our country. They destroyed our country. They created so much tension among Iraqis." — Firs Fertusi, a former fighter in the now-disbanded Mahdi Army, Los Angeles Times, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011.

All the costs — the more than 4,000 American casualties, the untold thousands of Iraqis killed, the billions of dollars spent, the ascendancy of Iran — are reflected in the yawning gap between Cheney's unbridled confidence on the eve of war and the grim reality of what happened.

In the end, not even really a "thank you."  Rather, it's more, "Don't let the door hit you in the behind on the way out."

So a Democratic president is ending a Republican president's war — a war based on faulty intelligence at best and lies at worst. And as my colleague Paul Thornton pointed out, today's GOP presidential candidates are using that decision to withdraw all U.S. troops by year's end to try to score cheap political points. 

How cheap? Consider this.  These same candidates have no problem vowing to overturn "Obamacare" if they are elected.  So if they really disagree with Obama's decision to withdraw  U.S. troops, all they have to do is say that on the stump:  "If elected, I'll send U.S. troops back to Iraq."

I wouldn't hold my breath for that one, though.

Yes, Iran's influence in the region is growing.  And yes, it's possible that Iraq's government won't be pro-U.S.

It's also likely that Islamist parties in Iraq, as well as elsewhere in the Middle East, will gain from the Arab Spring revolts and the toppling of Libya's Moammar Kadafi.  (For a good analysis of that, check out Doyle McManus' column in Sunday’s Times.

But let's face facts.  The U.S. is stretched militarily by the war in Afghanistan. Our economy is struggling. If, as some Republicans in Congress insist, even domestic programs such as disaster aid must be paid for by cuts in other programs, how can the GOP possibly call for continuing a costly military presence in a country that doesn't even want us there?

The bottom line: We weren't seen as liberators. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has a functioning government.

Enough is enough. It's time for us to go. 

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Photo: A woman walks near the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad on June 20, 2010. Credit: Hadi Mizban / Associated Press