Commentary (by James Kariuki) - Clinton’s remark on Iran may haunt her

Ref: http://www.eastandard.net/columnists/?id=1143985934&cid=190

Published on May 4, 2008, 12:00 am

By James N Kariuki

On primary election day in her do-or-die state of Pennsylvania, presidential contender Mrs Hillary Clinton was asked how she would respond in the event of a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran. It was largely a hypothetical question but Clinton gave a startling response. She would "totally obliterate them."

There was no immediate political threat for Clinton’s candidacy. The polls showed that she was well ahead in Pennsylvania; she was going to win. Israel was not in danger of a nuclear attack; Iran does not have nuclear weapons, it is Israel that does. Clinton’s extremist assertion was not prompted by a need to deter Iran to desist from an impeding nuclear aggression.

In the heat of the campaign, it is possible that Clinton was playing up to the gallery, stating what she believed an anti-Islamic audience wanted to hear. She was moved by a craving for votes. She may also have been appealing to the powerful Jewish community; she needed its financial and political support.

It is possible that Clinton’s words were drawn by a combination of both factors, but most likely by politics of desperation. She intended to illustrate that she is tough. In other words, she sought to distance herself from her awesome political rival, Barack Obama.

Indeed, she has been at pains in recent months to project him as too weak to be America’s commander-in-chief.

Clinton’s Iran statement was naÔve and unwise in more ways than one. Her major campaign pledge in foreign policy is that, if she is elected president, she will seek to restore US respectability in the world community. American standing has been severely damaged by the diplomatic recklessness of George W Bush administration.

Threatening to use nuclear weapons against a third world nation does little to re-establish trust in the world’s only super power. What the world community remembers is that the US was the first country to develop nuclear weapons. More critically, the world recalls vividly that the US was the first and only power to ever unleash nuclear destruction upon innocent civilian population.

International terrorism

Clinton’s assertion is particularly reckless coming from an individual who is theoretically only two steps away from the ‘buttons’ of the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. It is alarming and disconcerting as it comes from a mindset of a potential commander-in-chief that arrogates to the US the right to repeat and commit genocide against innocent civilians. For all intents and purposes, this is international terrorism on a grand scale.

What about political consequences of employing nuclear weapons rhetoric as a campaign strategy? Clinton probably did not consider that in the 1964 presidential race, Republican hopeful, Barry Goldwater, urged the US to consider using tactical nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. His mindset was, "…extremism in defence of liberty is no vice."

In the years to come, Goldwater admitted that his provocative nuclear suggestion was politically ill-advised and that it was largely responsible for his humiliating loss to Lyndon B Johnson.

In short, the American voter is not sympathetic to the suggestion of using nuclear weapons. If the Goldwater experience is anything to go by, Clinton’s statement may indeed come back to haunt her candidacy. It may have elicited instant audience applause but in the long run, Barack Obama’s balanced thoughtfulness in his responses may be what pays off politically.

Already Clinton’s military judgment has been questioned on the grounds that she was ‘fooled’ into supporting the war in Iraq by a phony claim that it (Iraq) possessed weapons of mass destruction. And so soon thereafter, she is employing military rhetoric of collective punishment of innocents, thereby endorsing terrorism.

One American critic has stated, "any nation that claims that it has the right to obliterate the population of another… should be challenged as unacceptably barbaric."

Is it the case that Clinton’s rhetoric is refuelling nuclear arms race? Is it giving reason for Iran’s need to develop nuclear weapons as "deterrence" to American jingoism?