By Steve Hynd
Elliot Abrams, Bush-era warmonger, writes that we shouldn't bet against Obama attacking Iran in the next two years.
One reason he gives is all about America's sense of exceptionalism.
the real issue in the Middle East today is whether we, the United States, will remain "top country" in the region or will allow Iran to claim some form of hegemony.
Funny that Abrams should be appealing to that exceptionalism while he and others of his neocon ilk also argue elsewhere that Obama doesn't believe in it. But Greg Scoblete has the factually correct answer to Abram's here:
Wars have frequently been waged for balance-of-power concerns, but in this case, how significant would the balance of power shift out of America's favor? Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is not the top country on the subcontinent - it can barely curtail its own home grown insurgency and it was threatened/cajoled by the U.S. to allow us to bomb portions of the country almost at will. North Korea has nuclear weapons and you'd be laughed out of a room if you suggested they had anything resembling "hegemony" in Asia.
Iran with a crude nuclear weapon would still be poor, weak and surrounded by unfriendly states. The U.S., by contrast, would not be.
Then, I think Abrams loses it completely.
The political side of all this is equally plain. Obama will, by all accounts, suffer a tremendous setback in November and may well be defeated in 2012. Should Iran acquire the Bomb in the next two years -- the timetable Jeffrey suggests -- Republicans will have an even stronger case that Obama has weakened our national security. The Obama who had struck Iran and destroyed its nuclear program would be a far stronger candidate, and perhaps an unbeatable one. Now, from my perspective that is no reason to stop Iran's nuclear program, but I'm a Republican. It's inevitable that as Iran creeps closer to the Bomb and Obama creeps closer to defeat, Democrats -- above all, the ones in the White House -- will start wondering exactly why striking that nuclear program is such a terrible idea. They'll start re-examining the likely Iranian reactions (they don't really want a war with us, do they? Regime survival and all that?), the down-sides of an Israeli strike (hey, we're the leaders of the free world, after all), the military challenge (well, the Air Force isn't very busy, and it's just a few sites to hit). They will of course not tell themselves this re-assessment is related to politics; they will persuade themselves they are doing what's right for the security of our country. Watch.
Huh? Starting wars to gain votes by banging the patriot drum is what Republicans do, dude! You must remember - you were there!
Abrams is telling us far more about the considerations that went into attacking Iraq in 2003 than about possible Democratic deliberations for 2012, I think.
But I could be wrong. What do you think?
Update: One friend emails saying "You're definitely right about where he completely loses it -- he's delusional if he thinks he can get Democrats to start salivating over the imagined electoral benefits of attacking Iran. There's something very creepy about him even trying to dangle that."
As many Newshoggers here have pointed out, Obama's Afghanistan policy only makes sense in political terms. He's clearly cynical enough to kill people for the sake of his career.
ReplyDeleteAnd he wouldn't be the first Democrat to help generate a crisis for political gain. Here's James H Rowe, adviser to Truman, on the benefits of a hard line against the Soviets:
There is considerable political advantage to the Administration in its battle with the Kremlin... The nation is already united behind the President on this issue. The worse matters get, up to a fairly certain point � real danger of imminent war � the more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President.
Kennedy played the same game with his phony "missile gap." So yeah, they have no moral objection to such a strategy. The only question is whether it truly does make political sense.