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GETTING SPECIFIC. I think Max Sawicky is getting at something very important here:
The task for those who have come around to oppose this war is to extrapolate wisely in order to cope with the bouquet of calamities elaborated in the article. It pretty much comes down to Iran. Will the U.S. permit Iran to become a regional, nuclear power, or will it precipitate yet another lurch down the slopes of disaster. In principle, I would say that is the number one issue for the next presidential campaign.Given where I think we'll still be in two years regarding Iraq, I'd dissent from that last line, but this is still important. Intra-center-left foreign policy fighting tends to get as airy and abstracted as it is virulent. Iran presents a specific issue that's going to be with us for a while and which will likely be put back on the front burner of political discussion by interested parties sooner or later. As the Iran question surfaced periodically as a subject of political debate this past year, I certainly noticed some of the same 2002-vintage bad habits on the part of centrist foreign policy commentators as well as Democratic politicians -- the studied, carefully non-committal nature of their analysis of the issue, the refusal to articulate clear, explicit statements of opposition to a preemptive strike against Iran if talks regarding its nuclear program broke down, the reflexive move to distance themselves from people to their left who are unserious in refusing to acknowledge the existence of a threat, etc. That is to say, I saw some of the same dynamics that hamstrung the debate in the run-up to the Iraq war, with tragic results. The debate over Iran, rather than doctrinal debates over "isolationist" versus "Truman hawk" liberals, offers a chance for people to avoid repeating those mistakes.
A truly disastrous engagement with Iran is on the table, and will be for the next two years; what do people think about it? What do people think should be done? As with the debate over what to do now in Iraq, people ought to be compelled to step up and speak clearly on this.
--Sam Rosenfeld
