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How Will the Candidates Deal with Iran?
Guest Column | By KT McFarland | May 8, 2008
This
has been the most topsy-turvy presidential election season in anyone’s
memory. Conventional wisdom has long since been thrown out the
window. Pollsters now openly admit that their polls have margins of
error larger than the spreads between the candidates. The high priests
of political punditry can pontificate all they want, but the fact
remains that none of them have a clue how all of this will turn out.
The
only thing for certain is that the candidate who wins will face the
most serious set of seemingly insoluble problems since Ronald Reagan
took the oath of office. But the presidency should not be for the faint
of heart, and we have to pray that the man or woman who walks into the
White House in January 2009 will have the experience, wisdom, and
personal courage to do what is right for America,
not just what is right for his or her reelection. That means whomever
we elect must put aside the briefing book marked “your next campaign”
and pick up the one marked “urgent problems.”
Tab A of that briefing book is Iran. Why Iran instead of Iraq? Because Iraq is just a subset of the Iran problem. Whatever you think about why and how we got into Iraq, the thing that will matter in the long run is how and why we get out, and what we leave behind.
There
is a truism in foreign affairs – there is no such thing as a do-over;
you have to deal with the here and now, and concentrate on what you do
next. President Bush has made serious mistakes in the Middle East, but we can’t undo those by just walking away. Now that he has finally taken Sen. McCain’s advice and put in more troops into Iraq, things are turning around. As long as the Surge is working and has a chance of success, we should continue with it.
If we quit Iraq without leaving behind a stable government, as Sens. Obama or Clinton propose, it will be easy pickings for Iran. It will finally achieve what it has sought for millennia – impotent neighbors to its east and west.
Some would argue, so what? It doesn’t matter to us if Iran is the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. We’ve got plenty of problems right here in America without worrying about the Middle East. Let’s just bring the troops home. It didn’t matter when we left Vietnam; why should it matter if we leave Iraq?
But the Middle East is not Southeast Asia. Iraq and Afghanistan are not Vietnam. There are differences: an emboldened Iran
is likely to develop nuclear weapons and set off a nuclear arms race in
the region. Their militant brand of Islam will spread throughout the
region. They will expand the long reach of Middle East funded terrorism. Without America watching its back, Israel will be alone in the Middle East and surrounded. Iran will control a significant percentage of the world’s energy resources.
And Iran is already flexing its muscles. After years of assurances that they were not involved in Iraq, we now have clear evidence they are funding, training and supplying weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq.
After years of assurances that their nuclear program is for only for
peaceful purposes, we now have clear evidence that their goal is
nuclear weapons. Now that they have been caught red-handed in both
instances, their response is to break off negotiations with the U.S. over Iraq and with the United Nations over nuclear enrichment.
The
Iranians invented the game of chess, and they’re good at it. Their
latest chess move – to cut off talks – is an indication they think
events are breaking their way, and that the Bush administration’s
influence in the Middle East is
waning. From their point of view, defiance is a good chess move,
especially if they believe the next American president they face will
pull out of the region and approach Iran, hat in hand and, as Sen. Obama says, “negotiate face to face.”
Pollsters,
pundits and politicians and even the candidates themselves have been
telling us for months that this is a critical election. It is critical,
and one of the biggest problems the new president will face is what to
do about Iran. We need the candidates to tell us what they plan to do when they open the briefing book that is waiting in the Oval Office.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor KT McFarland is a former top Pentagon official in the Reagan Administration and a frequent television and radio commentator on national security issues and foreign affairs.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
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