First of all, American politicians are accountable to the American populace, not to you. The American populace is not prepared to accept war with Iran in order to prevent Iran from getting nukes.
Part of the process by which a government decides what its position on an issue will be is an assessment of capacity to influence conditions. It's stupid to declare that you will not tolerate something you haven't the capacity to prevent. You just make yourself look a blustering idiot.
I'm sure the military has put together many options. Whether or not there are 20 I really don't know, but I'm sure there are several. When assessed, it's clear that these options either exceed the level of commitment acceptable to the populace - an absolute constraint in a democracy - or are unlikely to accomplish the objective, or are likely to produce a range of unintended consequences with negative effects that exceed the value of the goal, even in the unlikely event that the goal were to be achieved. Pursuing an option so assessed would not be brave, it would be dumb.
I can't see how courage enters into it at all, unless you think that American leaders ought to have the courage to put your demands ahead of those of their constituency... an odd thing to ask of the leaders of a democracy.
As far as the leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere are concerned, there is nothing that would please them more than to see American bombs raining down on Iran. That's what keeps them in business.
Bookmarks