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Sarah
Palin Makes Dr. Strangelove Come Alive
BY
ERNEST COREA (IDN)
WASHINGTON
DC - Historians of the future will probably spend much time looking back
at the year 2010 and trying to determine whether Sarah Palin was playing
the goat, acting the knave, simply following her one-time mentor, or
making a considered and seriously-meant policy proposal with her recent
comment about the U.S. going to war with Iran.
Was she speaking as a politician who is expected to enter the Republican
primary race for selection as that party’s candidate for president in
2012, or as a “celebrity” who needs continuously to seek and
maintain public attention -- come what may?
Palin’s comment had two outstanding peculiarities:
First, she offered it as advice to President Barack Obama on how to
maintain his hold on the White House for a second term, and that is the
very opposite of what she hopes will be the outcome of the next
presidential election. She has allied herself with a motley crew of
fringe activists whose anti-Obama rhetoric is harsh and uncompromising.
There seems to be no logic in her now offering Obama advice on how to
thwart those and other critics.
Second, she actually implied that despite the deaths and suffering
caused by two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. involvement in a third
would be a sure-fire way to win the hearts and minds of the voting
public. What a terrible indictment of the American people and from a
politician who is considered an effective right-wing populist, too. She
could not have known it at the time but her comment was made on the eve
of a report that American deaths in Afghanistan were about to reach
1000. This is the path to popularity?
ELECTION
Her involvement in this bizarre speculation about the next presidential
election took place in the course of an interview with Chris Wallace of
Fox News, Palin’s “home” TV station. Wallace, ruminating about the
next general election when Palin could be a contender asked: “How hard
do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?”
In fairness to Palin her response deserves to be considered in full.
Here it is:
“It depends on a few things. Say he played -- and I got this from
(failed presidential candidate, Pat) Buchanan, reading one of his
columns the other day -- say he played the war card. Say he decided to
declare war on Iran or decided really (to) come out and do whatever he
could to support Israel, which I would like him to do but -- that
changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between
now and three years. “Because I think if the election were today I do
not think Obama would be re-elected. But three years from now, things
could change if -- on the national security front.”
Her unscripted speech is sometimes short on lucidity, and Wallace was
obviously not going to interpret anything for her. He sought clarity,
asking Palin in a follow-up question: “But you’re not suggesting
that he would cynically play the war card?”
Said Palin:
“I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying if he did, things would
dramatically change. If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can
to secure our nation and our allies. I think people would, perhaps,
shift their thinking a little bit and decide, ‘well, maybe he’s
tougher than we think he’s -- than he is today,’ and there
wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve
another four years.”
INSPIRING
So there you have it. Obama’s way up in the polls and on to
re-election depends on whether or not he is willing to pander to
believers in aggression as policy.
Palin was wrong when she attributed ownership of the idea she was
floating to Pat Buchanan. That distinction goes to Daniel Pipes of the
U.S. right wing, sometimes described by his critics as a pseudo-scholar.
Pipes wrote in a magazine article online that Obama “needs a dramatic
gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight,
bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high,
where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations. Such an
opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to
destroy the Iranian nuclear weapon capacity.”
See, it’s so easy. Obama just says “bombs away” to the air force
and, bingo, he is set for re-election. In some circles, Dr. Strangelove
must be a truly inspiring figure.
MENTOR
Senator John McCain, Palin’s temporary mentor during the presidential
election campaign of 2008, uttered words that year which were not unlike
those of Pipes and Palin.
He was asked at a town hall meeting in South Carolina when the U.S.
would “send an air mail message” to Tehran. McCain’s spontaneous
response was to sing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” to the
tune of “Barbara Ann," a song made popular by that
almost-forgotten singing group, the Beach Boys.
Coming on top of an earlier statement by McCain supporting the concept
of “rogue-state rollback,” it was not surprising that McCain’s
less-than-melodious threat caused apprehension among politicians and
commentators. His staff quickly put out the word that the senator was
engaging “in a little humour” and McCain himself suggested that his
critics should “lighten up.”
This was something like the attitude of Sir Henry Wooten who said in the
17th century that a diplomat is “an honest man sent to lie abroad for
his country” and, when reprimanded, replied that his words were
“mere merriment.”
For his attempt at humour, Sir Henry was never employed as a diplomat
again -- and, of course, McCain was not employed by the American people
to fill the position of president.
CONSEQUENCES
Actions have consequences and few actions are likely to have greater
political consequences than an unilateral decision by Obama to wage war
against Iran. He has already annoyed his base by delaying closure of the
prison camp at Guantanamo, and stepping up military action in
Afghanistan. Speculation that the further draw down of U.S. troops from
Iraq might be delayed has already evoked signs of distress.
A third war in Iran might mollify segments of Palin’s base but is
unlikely to sit well on the rest of the American public. Even former
Vice President Dick Cheney derided the Palin proposal, not because its
implementation would help Obama but because going headlong into war on a
political whim is bad policy.
"The stakes are too high, the consequences too significant to be
treating those as simple political calculations,'' Cheney responded,
when asked on an ABC television program about Palin’s views.
"When you begin to talk about war, talk about crossing
international borders, you talk about committing American men and women
to combat, that takes place on a plane clear above any political
consideration,'' he added. He is unlikely to have been bothered by the
irony that this is eerily similar to what many commentators have said
about the Bush-Cheney rush to war in Iraq.
One of the most chilling potential consequences of Palin’s suggestion
is that it might embolden Israeli hawks to push for a pre-emptive strike
against Iran, thus creating conditions which might eventually
necessitate American engagement in a wider conflagration.
LEGACY
Obama has attempted to engage Iran diplomatically, while at the same
time seeking to exert maximum international pressure on Iran so as to
ensure that it will resist the temptation to acquire nuclear destructive
power while not being deprived of the right to peaceful uses of nuclear
power.
Efforts at securing external pressure continue to be bedevilled by the
complexities of the China-Iran-U.S. triangle.
The Iran-U.S. relationship, similarly, is made exceptionally difficult
by the legacy of mistrust that clouds each country’s perception of the
other.
Iranians claim U.S. support for and involvement in a UK-inspired and
managed coup that toppled the Iranian government in 1953 and drastically
altered the course of that country’s history.
They also claim alleged U.S. support to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war in
the 1980s. The Government of Iran and its strongest support appear
convinced as well that recent unrest has been activated by Western
intelligence.
Over here, many Americans find it extremely difficult to “forgive and
forget” Iran’s outrageous act of hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy
in Tehran. The American hostages were held captive for over 400 days.
These events are irrelevant to the current situation in which the
development of a nuclear weapon by Iran is likely to cause a scramble
for nuclear power by other nations in the region. How much or how little
will it take for nations with such power in a region beset by
deeply-held animosities to use that power?
[Source:
IDN-InDepthNews
| Analysis That Matters]
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The
writer has
served as Sri Lanka's ambassador to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and the USA.
He was Chairman of the Commonwealth's Select Committee on the media and
development.
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