“If all else fails, if after all the work we’ve done there’s nothing else we can do besides take military action, then of course you take military action,” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told the South Carolina debate audience on Saturday night. Two days earlier, I had interviewed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on the same subject, though my question supposed that Israel would strike at Iran’s nuclear program.
“If Israel acts to defend itself by striking at that capacity,” I asked Newt, “what ought the president of the United States, either our current or our next one, to do on the day that strike happens?
“We should be supportive of the state of Israel,” Gingrich answered quickly.
“If the Israelis, having endured the Holocaust and the loss of seven million Jews in World War II, conclude that an Iranian nuclear weapon poses the threat of a second holocaust, because two nuclear weapons on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would be the equivalent of a second holocaust,” he continued.
“If they conclude that is a risk they cannot live with,” Gingrich said, “we should respect their concern for survival. And I think that we should clearly indicate to the world that we would support whatever they think they have to do to survive.”
The Romney-Gingrich combined response of a willingness to use American military force against Iran’s nukes and certain support for Israel should that state act first, is exactly the right view of the threat posed by the world’s most dangerous government, and the position is in sharp contrast to President Obama’s “leading from behind” passivity.
Herman Cain ruled out military force against Iran, joining Ron Paul in that view and effectively taking himself out of serious consideration for the GOP nomination, even had he been able to overcome the two weeks of allegations against him.
The question is whether the president will now change his dangerous policy of appeasement towards Iran and do the right thing for the wrong reasons, whether that be assisting Israel in destroying Iran’s nuclear threat or ordering the American military to act unilaterally to do so.
The president’s approval rating dropped to 43 percent in the most recent CBS poll, and his disapproval number hit 47 percent in the same survey. These are the sort of numbers which foreshadow a blowout next November, especially as economists reach a consensus that it is practically impossible for the unemployment rate to drop as low as 8 percent, the very rate the president promised it would never pass.
A president this politically imperiled — a president from Chicago, where you do what you have to do to win — must surely be noting that the GOP is all but united in demanding actions to stop Iran, and that such action would produce great support across the United States.
He will also be weighing his shattered support among American Jewish voters, the product of four years of at best simmering but often overt hostility to Israel and its leaders.
So it is very possible that this weak, dithering, incredibly feckless president will find himself ordering the American military action discussed so much on the GOP debate stage Saturday night.
And if he does, the supporters of the nation’s security and world stability will be obliged to support him, whatever the political cost. It wouldn’t change the reality of his disastrous tenure as chief executive, but it would be by far the best thing he has done as president.
Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
