Spin Cycle

Our Dan Janison was among the first last week to draw attention to Sen. Clinton's promise in the ABC debate to create a defense umbrella in the Mideast, committing the US to "massive" retaliation against anyone attacking Israel or other allies (Kuwait, UAE) even as she also commits to withdrawing troops from the region.

Now, others are paying attention too, as she continues to talk about it, with explicit threats against Iran. In an interview with ABC:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president we will attack Iran. In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

And later, on MSNBC, discussing nuclear deterrence:

"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....We are not going to permit them, if we can prevent it, from becoming a nuclear power. But were they to become so, 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."

Such talk is a fairly obvious effort to pander to the pro-Israel vote. She's learned in New York that there's always some profit in being over the top in your pledges of love, fidelity and the use of violence to protect the Jewish state as election day nears, and no one in known modern history ever lost an election to a backlash from voters who actually want some facsimile of balance in Middle East policy.

But extending a commitment to nuclear retaliation in future conflicts we can't really anticipate in the most volatile region in the world seems like a rather large step to get a few votes. And the even more obvious question is what it does to the effort to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons in the first place.

We thought the position of Hillary and most everyone else was that Iran should not be permitted to go nuclear. By announcing, in advance, what your policy will be if they do go nuclear, aren't you signalling that your resolve to prevent them from doing that is incomplete, and if they push hard enough you will eventually give way? If you were actually committed to keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power, why talk about how you'll handle a post-nuclear Iran?

Isn't it basically admitting that your supposed commitment to keep nukes away from Tehran is just talk? Isn't that dumb???