Ezra gets this entirely correct:
The remarkable thing about the growing liberal hawk literature on Iran is its evasiveness — the unwillingness to speak in concrete terms of both the threat and proposed remedies. The liberal hawks realize they were too eager in counseling war last time, and their explicit statements in support of invasion have caused them no end of trouble since. This time, they will advocate no such thing. But nor will they eschew it. They will simply criticize those who do take a position.
Iran raises several complicated questions, but also a simple one: Do you think military force is called for in preventing Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons? Some, like me, say no. Some also, like me, do not believe the evidence supports the contention that Iran is a fully totalitarian society under the rule of a crazed and suicidal Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, and in fact think that such portrayals should be resisted and identified as part of a larger, pro-war narrative. This is how I ended up in Baer’s article as a convenient straw liberal who “excuse[s] the Iran regime, all the better to deny the very existence of a threat.”
Oddly, Baer did not take the opportunity to argue against my position. “Israel is again staring down a possible existential threat,” he wrote, “and the United States is once more facing a serious challenge to its interests in the region.” So the threat is to Israel, as well as to unspecified American interests in the region that face a “serious challenge.” Does that mean Baer thinks we should use force to prevent Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weaponry? Who knows? Baer retreats here to platitudes, saying that “it is incumbent upon us to provide a coherent foreign-policy alternative to Bush’s neoconservative vision, one that is true to the progressive legacy of internationalism — liberal democracy, rule of law, and equal opportunity.” But what about those nukes? What does that sentence suggest that we do?
Baer’s dodge is not rare. A while back, The New Republic demanded that “the West finally get ruthlessly serious about Iran.” Unless “ruthlessly serious” describes some subset of containment theory that I’m unfamiliar with, this seems like mercilessly frivolous advice. But such is the sorry state of discourse on Iran: lots of hyperventilating, but relatively little in the way of actual diagnosis or prescription.
It’s very simple. When it comes to Iran, “liberal hawks” need to either 1)explain in concrete terms what the threat to American interests is and — this is important! — what kind of military action can advance American interests and why, or 2)enjoy a delicious frosty mug of shut the fuck up. (And given their recent record of assessing American security interests and the efficacy of military force, perhaps some slinking away in shame would also be in order.)
