F inding out that fission fanatics in Iran had tested a long-range missile was sort of like finding out that the parents of the miscreant teenager next door decided to buy the little hooligan a car.
You’ve got to give it to Iran’s leaders, though: They may be trying to re-create the sixth century for their subjects, but they’ve gotno qualms about 21st-century hardware.
After the Iranian rockets lifted off, that weird little man in the Members Only jacket was yelling about American threats of military action being “a funny joke.”
Then, sounding like a cheesy gangster rapper, the deliciously named head of Iran’s “elite” air corps, Gen. Salami, warned: “Our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch.”
When that kind of talk is paired with an actual display of military prowess, Americans who usually tune out foreign policy start tuning back in.
Those Americans are also often the folks who are undecided, or at least persuadable, voters for the upcoming presidential election. They’re too busy to worry about Iran most of the time, just as they try to avoid politics until civic duty and self-preservation demand they pay attention.
Recognizing this overlap, both candidates for president pretended to be commander in chief Wednesday and gave their hypothetical solutions to an actual problem.
John McCain sounded every inch the Republican.
He wanted to beef up missile defenses in conjunction with our gutsier European allies to make “Quick Draw” Salami’s missiles a moot point. McCain then called for choking out the Iranian regime with draconian sanctions. It wasn’t reported whether McCain was singing any Beach Boys hits: “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran …”
Hey, the Republicans won the Cold War, so you might forgive McCain for being nostalgic for the Gipper’s style: Star Wars, prodding the Europeans into self-preservation and “The bombing begins in five minutes …”
Barack Obama’s response, however, was a surprise.
After the past three weeks, I was expecting to see Obama piloting a renegade bomber over Tehran a la Slim Pickens. Hillary Clinton once said she would “totally obliterate” Iran, so I figured the new Obama would need to personally deliver the means of obliteration to make his point.
Given the fact that Obama has found his inner hawk on real issues like Iraq and wiretapping, it was only logical to assume that on a more abstract matter like Iran, he would employ his new Brigadier Barack persona.
Outside of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, almost nothing has dogged Obama more than his early primary pledge to meet one on one with despots without any preconditions.
It sounded as if he was out of his depth when he said it, and his subsequent wriggling looked as if he knew he’d stepped in it. But once Iran went ballistic, Obama might easily have said that this was not the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he knew and drop his pledge for dictator dialogue.
Rather, Obama said that this reinforced why we needed to reach out to Iran ourselves insteadof being bound up in international coalitions that just keep people apart.
“One of the things you have to ask yourself: What are George Bush and John McCain afraid of [in] demanding a country meets all of your conditions before you meet with them?” Obama said in Billings, Mont.
The cowboys in Montana might have been moved by the logic that a hug requires more courage than a punch, but it seems rather unlikely.
So why was Obama willing to “refine” his position on Iraq but not on Iran?
In Iraq, the future is starting to come into focus.
The surge has had the desired effect, and now the Iraqis are stepping into the mold of most developing nations by complaining about Yankee imperialism. In several more years we can all be wiping away tears as the Iraqis go to the United Nations to express grave doubts about our human rights policy for the very first time. Our little Iraq, suddenly all grown up.
By the time the next president takes over, it seems pretty clear that the drawdown will be well under way, making Obama’s former positions academic.
Plus, the liberal base is already moving on from Iraq, and on to Iran.
Reading Seymour Hersh and others, you might feel certain that the neocons are cooking up the sequel to Iraq down in Dick Cheney’s lair.
Tough talk on the war that’s ending will be forgiven by liberals, whereas harsh words about a potential conflict will not. For Obama, though, most persuadable voters in swing states see things just the other way.
For them, complaining about Iraq is OK, but it needs to be in the context of lessons learned for the next fight.
