At what point, if any, would Obama be willing to abandon diplomacy and launch airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities (or give a wink to Israel to do so)? And what is the point, if any, at which Hillary would be willing to do the same? And what is the difference, if any, between those two points? (Obama has called an Iranian nuke "unacceptable," and I think Hillary used the same word.) And: Is this something they've discussed?

--Michael Crowley

George:

Hypothetical speculations like this are largely futile...for folks like us...because we are not privy to the inside information the main players possess. But that can also be a very dangerous thing...for folks like us...because we do know the information the main players have is almost always going to be incomplete or prejudiced.

Or, even worse, the policies are tied more to political or economic agendas than to "doing the right thing".

For example, go back to a document from the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century----in the year 2000.

Christopher Bollyn from AmericanFreePress.net:

The strategic “transformation” of the U.S. military into an imperialistic force of global domination would require a huge increase in defense spending to “a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually,” the PNAC plan said.

“The process of transformation,” the plan said, “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”

American Free Press asked Christopher Maletz, assistant director of the PNAC about what was meant by the need for “a new Pearl Harbor.”

“They needed more money to up the defense budget for raises, new arms, and future capabilities,” Maletz said. “Without some disaster or catastrophic event” neither the politicians nor the military would have approved, Maletz said.

The “new Pearl Harbor,” in the form of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, provided the necessary catalyst to put the global war plan into effect. Congress quickly allocated $40 billion to fund the “war on terrorism” shortly after 9-11

George:

These sort of policies are often sold to the public as morality plays. We attacked Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an autocratic dictator hell bent on seizing power in the region and attacking Israel, our allies and even America itself with horrific weapons of mass destruction.

The good news now, however, is that Barack Obama is not George Bush and Hillary Clinton is not Dick Cheney. Obama is not likely to hire folks like Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Kagen, William Kristol or Paul Wolfowitz.

My best guess then is that Iran would have to signal the world they are truly prepared to amass nuclear weapons and are ready willing and able to use them.

But will that happen? I  doubt it. Even Allah himself couldn't prevent Israel and the US from obliterating Iran if it did. And the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's "supreme leader", doesn't strike me as someone who would go down that path.

But, again, none of us in here really has substantive access to solid inside information about the probable consequences that would unfold as a result of these hugely complex and heterogonic relationships.  

george walton

Perhaps Hillary won't be too eager to lead on questions like this. After urging Bush not to rush to war in in Oct. 2002, she pretty much folded her tent and rallied round the prez when he ignored her prescriptions, short-circuited the inspections process, and rushed to war in March 2003.

Interesting fact: The secretary of state is not in the military chain of command, and therefore lacks the authority to order air strikes. Who knew, right? So this question is actually kind of a silly one.

And the thing is, if you sign up to be the top diplomat, and you think diplomacy has run its course but your president disagrees, you can't very well take your case to the public and say that there's really nothing more you can do here. Because maybe there is nothing more diplomacy can accomplish, but what it will look like to almost every observer is that you've reached the limits of your own talents and there's just nothing more _you_ can accomplish. Two very different things, and so a public split between Hillary and Obama on ending diplomacy and moving to a military track would wind up disgracing Hillary as a whiner and a failure. Now, I happen to believe that Hillary fundamentally is a whiner and a failure, but she's just savvy enough about her public image that I don't see her deliberately walking into the trap of declaring a premature end to diplomacy.

Then again, I would have thought her self-regard would have prevented her from telling outright lies about her resume, so I wouldn't actually bet money against Hillary doing a self-destructive and foolish thing.

adsprung said:

Perhaps Hillary won't be too eager to lead on questions like this. After urging Bush not to rush to war in in Oct. 2002, she pretty much folded her tent and rallied round the prez when he ignored her prescriptions, short-circuited the inspections process, and rushed to war in March 2003.

George:

However difficult it might be, we have to approach the choices Hillary Clinton made back then in political contexts that were neither linear nor literal.

This, for all practical purposes, is how politcal discourse and policy unfolds for those who do not view negociation and compromise as stabbing The Cause in the back....or as selling out to The Enemy.  

It is the trickiest balancing act of all for some.

In other words, who really knows how many balls she had keep up in the air as both an ambitious politician and a woman in the post 9/11 hysteria that was stoked to a fever pitch by dogmatic neoconservative ideologues linked to the military industrial complex warmongers.

We can look back now [after the fiasco that is Iraq] and blame her for not being as prescient as Barack Obama. But what was really at stake for Obama back in 2003? The exasperation most Truth Tellers feel regarding these cynical political calculations is embedded in the purity of a moral scripture they trumpet that has very little to do with the way in which political economies function in the nitty gritty world of power and pull.

Go back and watch the HBO series The Wire. Does anyone in here really believe that a Baltimore mayor with all the traits and talents of Barack Obama could have turned the city around?

Indeed, what I will find fascinating to watch is Barack Obama proving me wrong. And that is because it is not just a fading metropolitan Humpty Dumpty he has to put back together, but the mother of all Humpty Dumpties: the whole damned United States of America.

Not to mention the calamities that now beset a globalized economy and failed states that might come completely unravelled. Like, say, Pakistan.

george walton