In the last few weeks, the Democratic field has settled on an attack against the frontrunner: Doublespeak. "I believe Senator Clinton should be held to the same standard that every one of us should be held to," says John Edwards. "Tell the truth, no more double-talk." Indeed, the Edwards camp even asked the Clinton campaign five simple question on Iraq, questions, "that every candidate should have to answer."
The questions the Edwards camp asks are good ones. I too would like the various Democrats to go on the record as to whether they'll leave permanent bases in Iraq. But here's another question every campaign should have to answer, and that none of them have: Will you attack Iran in order to prevent their construction of a nuclear weapon?
That is, after all, the defining foreign policy question of the race. Iraq is a more acute concern, but so much of the damage there has already been done, and we are so hostage to the facts on the ground, that the differences and distinctions between the candidates are, in some ways, of relatively uncertain importance. Once in office, their actions on Iraq will be governed by the realities of the war and the domestic polls.
Not so with a nuclear Iran, where the executive really will be allowed to make the decision as to whether we launch air strikes, or whether we seek a policy of deterrence, negotiation, and engagement. Yet till now, the candidates have largely been allowed to divert such questions, and all have done so in the same way. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, John Edwards said that, "to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table." Asked by 60 Minutes where he would use military force to disrupt the Iranian weapon program, Barack Obama said, "I think we should keep all options on the table." And Hillary Clinton, speaking to AIPAC, said, "We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table."
This language has fully permeated the race, to the point that no Democrat would dare step outside its confines. Those who want to signal an unwillingness to trigger war over Iran's ambitions must do by implication, and with sufficient plausible deniability. I'm pretty sure that that's what Edwards is implying with his new Iran policy, but since he won't say so explicitly, I can only assume. I'm fairly certain that that's what Barack Obama is suggesting when he talks up the dangers of a military attack on Iran, but since he, also, won't forswear war-for-weapons, I can't be certain. And though Hillary Clinton hasn't given me any reason to believe she's not perfectly serious about using bombers to take out suspected nuclear production facilities, if Edwards and Obama won't say they disagree, I can hardly say it for them.
Of course, mention this to one of the candidates, or one of their staffs, and they will respond with a shocked, "no commander-in-chief can take options off the table!" And, it's true, they can't. But no options are ever off the table. Hillary Clinton's support for universal health care doesn't preclude her from doing nothing. Barack Obama's support for withdrawal from Iraq does not stop him from reversing course if the country descends into genocide. Candidates tell us what they mean to do, and what analytical frame they bring to an issue, and then they change course if the context shifts. But on no other issue do we allow the existence of mythical "table" to obscure the candidate's policy positions. The refusal to take options off the table is, in the case of Iran, simply a refusal to tell us what they think on a central issue: Can a nuclear Iran be deterred? Or must it be bombed?
In some ways, the absence of weapons in Iraq have allowed the Democrats an easy out on the subject. Rather than being forced to face up to the consequences of our invasion and reevaluate whether America should really be overrunning tiny countries whose armories offend us, the various candidates have been able to pin their mistake on information, rather than ideology. As the argument goes, if they knew there had been no weapons, they would have never voted for war. Obama, it should be said, opposed war without regard to the weapons. Edwards, when I questioned him on this subject, refused to answer the hypothetical. And Hillary has been quite straightforward in saying that she regretted the flawed intelligence, but saw no reason to apologize -- and thus, signal retroactive disagreement with -- her vote, given the data she was working with.
Which makes the Iran question all the more important: It's easy for Democrats to be anti-Iraq-War. That conflict has devolved into tragedy, and is crushingly unpopular. But anti- the type of reasoning that led us into Iraq? Anti- the argument that a small, Middle Eastern nation's development of weapons offers sufficient cause to launch an invasion? That's been a harder denial to elicit, but it's far more relevant. It tells us something about what they mean to do, rather than merely undo.
The Democrats don't need to take any options off the table. But they need to admit which ones they plan to use. Otherwise, it's just doublespeak.
