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An Alternative Way To Lose The Debate Over Attacking Iran

Via James Joyner, Bernard Finel offers a four-step method for making a better case against attacking Iran: What Walt — and other opponents of war with Iran need to do — is to propose a plausible alternative way to “win.” There are several options: (1) Co-opt the “Bush causes the Arab Spring” position and argue […]

Via James Joyner, Bernard Finel offers a four-step method for making a better case against attacking Iran:

What Walt — and other opponents of war with Iran need to do — is to propose a plausible alternative way to “win.” There are several options:

(1) Co-opt the “Bush causes the Arab Spring” position and argue that we just need to give it more time to spread to Iran.

(2) Making a vigorous argument in favor of deploying regional ballistic missile defense systems to thwart emerging Iranian capabilities.

(3) Argue for covert support to Iranian dissidents to topple the regime from inside.

(4) Whatever, make something up, something that will surely be costly and stupid, but probably less costs [sic] and stupid than a war would be.

It should be obvious why this wouldn’t work. For starters, the first three of these are all terrible ideas, and they’re contrary to much of what opponents of a war against Iran have been arguing for years, so there’s a problem of substance and credibility. There’s no advantage in co-opting the lie that Bush is responsible for the Arab Spring, and virtually everyone writing against a with with Iran has already ridiculed this idea as the nonsense that it is. Besides, this isn’t going to undermine the hawkish position. If Bush were responsible for the Arab Spring because he ordered the invasion of Iraq, the hawks would say that this is an argument in favor of attacking Iran. Iranian missile capabilities are not that great, so there’s no reason to encourage the public to believe otherwise by advocating for missile defense programs that many of us believe to be unnecessary. What possible purpose could be served by hyping a threat we don’t believe exists while promoting a policy option we don’t think we need? Which dissidents does Finel propose aiding to achieve this improbable regime change?

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, opponents said that the threat from Iraq was being grossly exaggerated or didn’t exist at all. War opponents were right. That ought to give their arguments some greater weight when they say the same thing about Iran, especially since the evidence suggests that opponents are right once again. The worst thing to do is to concede that the threat is as significant as the hawks claim it is. The debate over the Iraq war was lost when many skeptics felt compelled to open their arguments with the admission that Hussein was a grave threat. He wasn’t. Because many skeptics thought that their arguments would simply be ignored if they didn’t say this, they ended up endorsing bad assumptions that formed the foundation of the pro-war argument.

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