Who would be a better Commander In Chief, Barack or Hillary? At This Point, Hillary Pulls Ahead: Defining Reality for Iran

In April 1988 the American and Iranian navies fought the biggest air-sea battle waged since World War II. By the time it was over, carrier-based U.S. attack planes had sunk the frigate Sahand and disabled the frigate Sabalan, the pride of the Iranian navy.

Harold Lee Wise, author of Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987-1988, which came out last year from the U.S. Naval Institute Press argues there are two basic lessons to be gleaned from the fight 20 years ago that do not bode well for the future, i.e., a Iran-U.S. Naval War may be just around the corner.

1. Even if outgunned, Iran will not back down from a fight. In 1988 the Iranians surprised American intelligence officers with their "aggressiveness and boldness," says Wise. In one of the shootouts during the battle in April 1988 an Iranian guided missile patrol boat confronted three U.S. warships. "Despite radio warnings that the Americans intended to sink it, the patrol boat captain did not surrender and instead attacked," says Wise. "Later in the battle two Iranian frigates left the safety of port to join the fight against what they surely knew were overwhelming odds."

2. Low-tech weapons are effective in naval conflict. "Modern technology remains weak at detecting undersea mines," says Wise. But mines are not the only problem. In the 1980s, as now, the Iranians used "swarming" tactics against larger merchant and naval vessels, sending relatively small boats at high speeds buzzing around and near the U.S. ships. The same thing happened in January this year, and possibly—the boats were never identified—just last week around a merchant ship on contract to the U.S. Navy.

The inescapable conclusion is -- The Iranians believe that they can take on a larger foe, and if not win, then do a hell of a lot of damage, and history shows they may be right.

There's a lot of bull***t from the Neocons that Iran cannot be deterred, that they're basically "crazy" and out of touch with "reality" so that we have no choice but to go to war.

The Iranians can be fierce -- but they're not insane, and therein lies the rational strategy and approach, and Hillary has hit it on the head:

If diplomacy with Iran fails over it's nuclear program (a highly likely outcome), the United States will be left with only two options: deterrence and preventive war. Of these policies, deterrence is the "least bad," asserts a study released today by the Cato Institute. In the policy analysis The Bottom Line on Iran: The Costs and Benefits of Preventive War versus Deterrence, Justin Logan, foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, systematically analyzes the short- and long-term consequences of both deterrence and preventative war, demonstrating that the costs of military action in Iran would be nightmarish.

Hillary, I think, gets this, and she correctly believes that the Iranians are not suicidal (the top leadership anyway) and that they are in good contact with reality and that they are capable of rational geopolitical calculation. Given this -- what do you do? Exactly what Hillary did: 

You define reality for them. You deter them -- you scare the living the shit out of them and let them know in absolutely no ambiguous uncertain terms that utter and complete destruction awaits any really dumb stupid thing they could do, like attack the U.S. or an ally with a nuclear weapon. If they don't get that, if they don't believe that, then hundreds of thousands if not millions of Middle-Eastern peoples are more likely to face living and dying in a real nightmare someday.

We can't have a war with Iran. So -- deter them. Deter the HELL out of them.

Thank you Hillary. I won't vote for you (you sound too much like a hawkish military interventionist for my tastes), but on this specific issue, I wish Obama would take your lead and double down on your threat: err on the side of over rather than under-deterrence. And if Obama goes up against McCain, he's going to have to push deterrence, not war, to distinguish himself, and Obama listening to someone like Liberal Values is just going to get his butt kicked in the race against McCain.