Target: Iran

Chomping on some corn flakes this morning, I turned on Good Morning America, where anchor Chris Cuomo conducted a four-minute interview of Senator Hillary Clinton. This exchange caught my attention:

Cuomo: "If Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be?"

Clinton: “"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. That's what we will do. There is no safe haven…we would be able to totally obliterate them.”


America’s ill-conceived intervention in Vietnam cost 50,000 American lives, millions of civilian deaths, and $700 billion in 2007 dollars. In 2003, we attacked Iraq, which proved to be a toothless tiger that posed no real threat to the United States or our allies. Billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, the drumbeats grow louder to turn our guns on Iran. You’d think by now, our leadership, media and citizenry would’ve learned their lesson, and stopped threatening military force against countries that pose no imminent threat to America. But they haven’t. So here’s my attempt to cut through the groupthink:

Senator Clinton: Your use of such forceful language suggests that Iran is on the verge of doing exactly as Cuomo suggests. Where is your hard evidence that Iran has the ability to threaten its neighbors and/or the United States with a nuclear attack? And that it would suicidally choose to exercise it? Why isn’t Israel’s nuclear arsenal enough of a deterrent that the United States need offer its own? Why do you verbalize the almost comical imbalance between our respective militaries in the crudest of terms? And if the goal is to persuade Iran that they don’t need nuclear weapons, is the use of such bellicose language by a Presidential candidate the most optimal way to do so?

Chris Cuomo: Senator Clinton had already answered multiple questions on Iran in the same vein. Given the limited time that Good Morning America allocates for interviews of Presidential candidates, why not take the opportunity to ask her for evidence that a threat is realistic and imminent? Her estimates of possible lives lost, dollars spent, allies alienated and energy supplies disrupted if the United States chose to “totally obliterate” an ancient civilization of 70 million people?

Americans: Imagine for a moment that you are an ordinary Iranian. You toil under a suffocating regime that tries to mask its domestic economic failures by blustering against perceived enemies abroad. A government that you didn’t choose through a free election, and seems to be more concerned with enforcing dress codes than addressing unemployment. Many of your friends and family look to the United States as a model for liberty and economic vitality, even though America supported Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked war against your country. A war that cost the lives of at least 500,000 of your countrymen. Your country has never attacked anyone, yet a major Presidential candidate takes your leadership’s bait and promises to “obliterate” you if your dictatorial leaders attack Israel. Distasteful as they may be, your leaders promise to protect you with nuclear weapons of their own, while America threatens you with a nuclear attack.

Your government is not on your side, that’s for sure. But what would make you think any differently about America?