First off, don’t call me — or John McCain — a “warmonger.” That sort of rhetoric won’t advance this debate.

I think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous man, and, with the emergence of a nuclear Iran, poses an unprecedented threat to Israel, the entire region, and even the world.

But it’s one thing for me, a non-Jewish man in the good ol’ U.S. of A. sitting here in my cozy chair sipping on a cup of coffee, to talk about Iran; it’s another thing if you’re a Jew in Israel, surrounded by Iran-backed terrorist groups lobbing rockets into densely populated civilian areas.

Let’s see what Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister of Israel, thinks (courtesy of the Jerusalem Post):

“Iran will be the first nuclear state in history against which deterrence won’t work, even if the deterrent is nuclear,” Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday at an international conference titled “Russia, the Middle East and the Challenge of Radical Islam.”

“Nothing will stop the Iranians - not the use of force and not a fear of being hit in retaliation,” he said, adding that “every Israeli withdrawal from territories it controls leaves room for Iranian terror to enter.”

Netanyahu added that “if in the past, Hizbullah was a state within the state of Lebanon, it seems today that the government of Lebanon is a state within a Hizbullah stronghold.” “In the last 30 years, we have been living in a world where Sunni extremists succeed in attacking targets in the Western world, while on the other hand, Shi’ite Iran is rapidly advancing to the point of no return in its nuclear aspirations,” the Likud leader said.

Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, who served as deputy defense minister under Amir Peretz, called Russia “the Iranian Empire’s No. 1 weapons supplier,” saying it “in fact arms the forces most hostile to Israel today. This is totally against the role the new Russia should be filling in the regional and international arenas.”

He added that “escalation in the ongoing confrontation between Israel and Iran and its proxies is inevitable. This confrontation is part of a wider confrontation between western democracy and Islamic fascism, and the Russian leadership will have to pick sides - the sooner the better.”

Do you see the danger in all of this? Iran attacks Israel — Israel and the US respond; then Russia picks a side; then maybe Turkey or China pick sides; then maybe Europe, or Japan or Taiwan (or North Korea or Pakistan) get involved. If you don’t think small conflicts can lead to global wars, you must have slept through 20th century history class. (Here, let me refresh your memory.)

I obviously don’t know the solution to the problem of a nuclear Iran. But I do know that no matter how poorly the War in Iraq turns out, we must remain strong — and be willing to fight again to protect freedom and democracy.

4,000 American soldiers dead: very bad.

72,000,000 people, including over 400,000 American soldiers dead: much, much, worse.