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Attacking Hard-liners for “Spinelessness” Is a Dead End

Trying to turn charges of "weakness" around on hard-liners won't advance the cause of restraint.
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Damon Linker calls out Republican Iran hawks for being irrationally afraid of Iran:

When leading politicians in the most militarily powerful nation on the planet believe they see a mortal threat in a country with a GDP roughly the size of Maryland’s and lacking even a single bomb — well, that’s a sign of world-historical spinelessness.

Democrats should be saying so. Loudly and repeatedly.

Linker’s argument is fine as far as it goes, but there are a few things that he misses. First, the irrational fear of an Iranian bomb isn’t limited to one party. It is unfortunately a very widely shared view that most elected members of both parties hold. This view also drives most of the debate about Iran’s nuclear program. Democrats can’t start shouting about Republican “spinelessness” because so many of their own members are guilty of falling for the same alarmist claims. Because the public has been inundated with alarmist messages about Iran from their leaders in both parties, it is unlikely that voters will respond well at this point to having their worries about an Iranian threat attacked as gutlessness.

More to the point, the framing of these issues in terms of strength/weakness or courage/cowardice is one reason why minor and manageable threats get turned into “existential” ones and why reckless and aggressive policies gain support. Arguing along these lines makes people ignore the risks of reckless action. It typically doesn’t encourage restraint and caution. Trying to turn charges of “weakness” around on hard-liners can’t work in the way Linker hopes because hard-liners are sure to benefit whenever we fetishize “toughness” as a highly desirable trait in the making of policy. Besides, all of this takes for granted that Iran hawks are genuinely frightened by small and manageable threats. It is just as likely that these threats don’t alarm them nearly as much as they claim, but they know that they can inflate the threat in order to frighten the public into supporting their dangerous policies. When alarmists portray a given regime as an intolerable menace, that is mostly for propaganda purposes or to provide an excuse for the aggressive policy they already wanted to pursue.

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