Dan Drezner takes issue with Richard Clarkeâs NYTimes piece on Iran. Says the Drez:
Onewould think that this would be the right moment for Clarke, a genuineexpert on this question, to introduce his own thoughts on the matter.Instead, we get a ânational dialogueâ cop-out. Thatâs a close secondbehind âmobilize political willpowerâ on the list of Grand andMeaningless Policy Proposals.
Before March 2003, I wouldhave been with Drezner on this one. But whatever you think of Iraq, ithas shown the Bush White House to be more hostile towards honestnational dialogue than any modern wartime leader. Facts were fudged, the most reasonable critics were called unpatriotic, reality was ignored, and accountability was dispensed with completely.This was all allowed to happen, of course, because the American peoplewere persuaded that Iraq/Al-Qaeda/terrorism/totalitarianism presented alife-ending, all-consuming, gut-busting, screaming threat to everyAmerican and their 2.3 cute, blue-eyed children. I donât know if weâregoing to try to engage Iran militarily, but if we are, Clarke hasabsolutely the right idea: Job number one has to be setting the stagefor an honest debate.
Clarke doesnât just want âan honest national dialogue.â He says:
Thus,we need an honest national dialogue now on how much we feel threatenedby Iran and what the least-bad approaches to mitigating that threat are.
Noticewhat Clarke calls for: An honest assessment of how big a threat Iranrepresents, and a realization that some strategies to disarm them couldwind up doing us more harm than good in the process. These are twocomponents that were absolutely absent from our dialogue on Iraq, and Ithink youâd be hard-pressed to argue that we havenât suffered for it.So I guess Drezner can call Clarkeâs op-ed a cop-out if he wants to.Personally, Iâm embarassed that Clarke even had to point out that anhonest national dialogue might be a good thing. But the fact is, hedid. If you donât think so, just look behind you.
