When preemptive warnings make sense, and silly season criticism doesn’t
The Obama campaign is running on empty. Empty, when it misrepresents the Clinton gas tax holiday plan as leading to “boost oil industry profits” - when the simple truth is that Obama doesn’t have a straightforward alternative plan himself. Empty, when he misrepresents Clinton’s answer to an ABC journalist’s hypothesis of a nuclear attack on Israel as “language reflective of George Bush” - as he conveniently confuses Bush’s bluster in action with Clinton’s stark warning ahead. I’ll dwell a bit on that now.
I just read Jack Cafferty’s astonishing rendition of the “Iran nuclear attack” issue:
Hillary Clinton sounds too much like President Bush. That’s Barack Obama’s take on Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacks Israel. Clinton initially made the comments a couple weeks ago, saying: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” Obama says this isn’t the language we need right now. He says it’s too similar to the kinds of things President Bush says, what Obama calls “bluster and saber rattling.” Obama says Clinton is changing the rules right before an election. He said she scolded him about Iran before, saying “we shouldn’t speculate about Iran, we’ve got to be cautious when we’re running for president.”
Never mind that what Clinton was commenting on was a question concerning a response to a hypothetical nuclear attack on Israel!
The issue was launched initially during the televised Pennsylvania primary debate, hosted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, with the following open question:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama, let’s stay in the region. Iran continues to pursue a nuclear option. Those weapons, if they got them, would probably pose the greatest threat to Israel. During the Cold War, it was the United States policy to extend deterrence to our NATO allies. An attack on Great Britain would be treated as if it were an attack on the United States. Should it be U.S. policy now to treat on Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack against the United States?
Obama eventually ended his answer to that essential question thus:
[...] that would be an act of aggression that we would — that I would consider an attack that is unacceptable. And the United States would take appropriate action.
And what was Clinton’s answer? She answered with a three-point policy that she’d put in place as soon as possible, to prevent such a situation from happening in the first place:
- Diplomatic engagement with Iran;
- Deter other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons;
- Warning Iran that an attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation by the US.
I’ll provide the exact quote for that third element:
And we will let the Iranians know, that, yes, an attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation. But so would an attack on those countries that are willing to go under the security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear ambitions. And finally, we cannot permit Iran to become a nuclear weapons power. And this administration has failed in our efforts to convince the rest of the world that that is a danger, not only to us, and not just to Israel but to the region and beyond. Therefore, we have not to have this process that reaches out beyond even who we would put under the security umbrella, to get the rest of the world on our side to try to impose the kind of sanctions and diplomatic efforts that might prevent this from occurring.
I can’t see anything wrong whatsoever with her answer there.
Then, on Monday, April 21st, Clinton appears on Olbermann’s Countdown, where he presses her to clarify on the nature and context of “massive retaliation” and the “security umbrella” that she also mentioned in the Pennsylvania debate. Because her answer goes more into specifics, I’ve decided to put a copy of that pertinent quote of hers here:
CLINTON: Well, what we were talking about was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran. If Iran does achieve what appears to be its continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons — and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times. We used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world — and what I think the president should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel. In addition, if Iran were to become a nuclear power it could set off an arms race that would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing because the countries in the region are not going to want Iran to be the only nuclear power so I could imagine that they would be rushing to obtain nuclear weapons themselves. In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement where we said, no, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well. It is a theory that some people have been looking at because there is a fear that if Iran, which I hope we can prevent, becoming a nuclear power, but if they were to become one some people worry that they are not deterrable, that they somehow have a different mindset and a worldview that might very well lead the leadership to be willing to become martyrs. I don’t buy that but I think we have to test it and one of the ways of testing it is to make it very clear that we are not going to permit them, if we can prevent them, from becoming a nuclear power. But were they to become one, their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States, which personally I believe would prevent it from happening and that we would try to help the other countries that might be intimidated and bulled into submission by Iran because they were a nuclear power, avoid that state by creating this new security umbrella.
The next morning, on April 22nd, Clinton appears on ABC’s Good Morning America show, where she rephrases her deterring threat into a more pointed variant, stating the well-known truism that the US can “totally obliterate” Iran, if it ever gets the insane idea of launching a nuclear attack against Israel.
Let’s look at snapshots from Clinton’s answer on those three occasions:
Seriously, do those statements in answer to questions suggesting a hypothetical future nuclear attack by Iran on Israel really ruffle feathers? Makes one wonder about the moral and emotional constitution of those in a tizzy over them. Me myself, I don’t wonder: Obama’s calculated but still ridiculous comparison with Bush’s bluster and Clinton’s stark warning is little but pandering to the lily-livered crowd that apparently prefers to believe defensive pacts based on mutual assistance simply don’t exist. The poor naive devils; Obama scores well with them.
Anyhow, and clearly, this is weeks old material. It’s also very much a matter of answering to hypotheses, as Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon - not yet.
But I also think there’s another angle here, that deserves some thought: Israel isn’t exactly in a defenseless position, right now… As Robert Windrem points out:
All the sturm and drang misses one critical point. Israel does not need the US to counter attack. Israel has the world’s sixth largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, behind only the US, Russia, China, the UK and (maybe) France. It can handle ANY Iranian threat on its own, thank you very much.
True, but the essence of the journalists’ question that sparked off this “issue” was to probe each of the candidates’ stance; now we know what each one is made of: Obama offers lots of meandering words (some believe that’s “soaring”) boiling down to some vague hint at “appropriate action”, while Clinton goes into pithy points of immediate action to avoid such a horrendous scenario from ever happening - while not ignoring an opportunity to send of a stark warning that any nuclear attack on the US allies will bring terrible consequences, so that any such thought had better be parked in the never never land.
That is an angle that the lily-livered hyperventilating crowd apparently loves to miss. They’re probably dreaming of holding Ahmadineyad’s hands and singing Kumbaya while cosponsoring his complaint at the UN for Clinton’s tough truth.
Another reason I’m staunchly supporting Senator Clinton: it’s no time for woolly words, we need instead sensible, tough, well-thought out and determined action to get back on track to the future.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: Clinton, Iran, nonsense, nuclear attack, Obama, obliterate
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