Deterrence Works you Silly Little Liberal Nimrods

Another confusion coming mostly from the liberal blogsmearsphere is that this type of talk will encourage Iran to build nuclear weapons, e.g.,

Does Clinton want Iran to develop nuclear weapons? That may seem like an absurd question. But it's inspired by her threatening statement. Iran had a nuclear weapons program, halted it, and now appears to be headed in that direction again. Threatening to "obliterate them," all 71 million Iranians, offers up ample incentive, along with propaganda cover, for the Mullahs in charge to move forward with these weapons of mass destruction (Michael Collins, Hillary Proves Her "Toughness," The Liberal Journal).

but . . .

Tehran's nuclear ambitions date back to the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. The bulk of the evidence suggests that a "peaceful" nuclear program has widespread support in Iran for reasons of national pride and regional prestige. The goal of a nuclear-weapons arsenal is more controversial, but given the dangerous neighborhood in which Iran is located, support for that objective also goes well beyond the mullahs and their staunch allies. Washington could be making a serious miscalculation if it assumes that [even] a democratic Iran would be content to remain non-nuclear. (Ted Galen Carpenter, Dubious Assumptions about Iran, Foxnews.com on February 8, 2006).

The liberal blogsmearsphere has largely accused HRC of being a Neo-Con, but Neo-Cons generally believe that Iran cannot be rationally deterred and that leaves the U.S. and it's allies no choice but to launch a pre-emptive war with the goal of regime change. HRC, instead, is arguing for deterrence, probably because she understands that this neo-con position is the real incentive for Iran to build nuclear weapons.

This isn't to say that HRC isn't kind of grandstanding here, i.e., Israel doesn't need us to defend it against a nuclear armed Iran:

Israel does not need the US to counter attack. Israel has the world's sixth largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, behind only the US, Russia, China, the UK and (maybe) France. It can handle ANY Iranian threat on its own, thank you very much.

The U.S. estimates Israel has about 200 nuclear weapons made up of five different classes of weapons. Israel assembled its first two bombs on the night of Nov. 2, 1966. In the Six-Day War, it had two weapons on alert; by the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 20 were on alert; by the Gulf War, the number had reached more than 200.

There are thermonuclear missile warheads on missiles with intercontinental (Jericho II) and intermediate (Jericho I) range, nuclear landmines, artillery shells and neutron bombs to stop assaults across their vulnerable borders, aerial bombs attached to American-made F-15's dispersed and on alert. It has a nuclear target base of nearly 100 targets, which, like the US base, is continually updated and which, like the US, can be updated in near real time. And it has an entire wing of its Air Force, the secret 2nd Wing, to manage it all.

More importantly, Israel has a second strike capability, that is, a capability of striking any enemy even if that enemy has already destroyed Tel Aviv. A single nuclear weapon might able to take out most of the Israeli population, which lives around Tel Aviv, but Israel has enough capability to deliver a society-smashing blow on Iran within hours. Iran would be triumphant, and then incapable of functioning as a society, in very short order.

And there isn't a strategic thinker in the Middle East who doesn't know that, as should Senator Clinton. (Domenico Montanaro, 'OBLITERATE?' ISRAEL CAN DEFEND ITSELF, MSNBC, First Read, May 5th, 2008).

What Mr. Montanaro is arguing here is that Israel by itself is enough of a deterrence against Iran, and you can bet the Israelis have made it very, Very, VERY clear to Iran what would happen to it if it attacked Israel, and you can bet they didn't morally lecture them as Mr. Scheer would have them do.

So, the real question the liberal blogsmearsphere should be asking about all this is: does deterrence work (against a Nation State), and I think history and the rational nature of human psychology suggest it does.

Even if it's not foolproof (and, of course, it's not), the costs and problems associated with deterrence are far Far FAR less than WAR, which is what the Neo-Cons want (see Forget about War with Iran? and The Blueprint of Blame: Provoking War with Iran).

The left and the liberal blogsmearsphere should be thanking, not condemning, HRC.

Could HRC worded it all a bit differently? Sure -- but the message, the intent, the "idea" would need to have been exactly the same,

. . . and just as crystal clear.