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Santorum’s Fear-Mongering in 2006

Jonathan Tobin looks back on Santorum’s disastrous re-election bid: The other reason he lost in a landslide was the war in Iraq. Santorum was a strong supporter of the war and bore the brunt for its unpopularity. Though the issue had little resonance at the time, Santorum also made concern about Iran and its nuclear […]

Jonathan Tobin looks back on Santorum’s disastrous re-election bid:

The other reason he lost in a landslide was the war in Iraq. Santorum was a strong supporter of the war and bore the brunt for its unpopularity. Though the issue had little resonance at the time, Santorum also made concern about Iran and its nuclear program a prominent part of his campaign. His prescience on that issue is to his credit.

Tobin’s post is a bit unusual in that it is a rare acknowledgment by an interventionist that the Iraq war was a major factor in Republican losses in 2006. He also pays some attention to the rest of Santorum’s fear-mongering that year, but naturally understates just how alarmist and ridiculous Santorum became during that campaign. An article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review captured some of it:

“The principal leader of this Islamic fascist movement is Iran,” Santorum said. “I believe this is the greatest enemy we will ever face. This is the enemy of our generation. It is the challenge of our time. And yet, we tend to play politics with it here in America — sadly.”

Later on, he also said:

Santorum charged that Iran has supplanted al-Qaida as the leader of the war against the West. Iran has decided al-Qaida “can’t do the job and we can,” he said. “(Iran has) the resources and the potential of a nuclear weapon.”

This was Santorum’s “prescience” in 2006: lunatic warnings about a grossly exaggerated Iranian threat. One aspect of crazy rhetoric like this is that it can cut both ways. If an audience doesn’t realize that “Islamic fascist” is a nonsense construction, it could sound very worrisome. Once you realize that it is a phrase crafted by delusional ideologues to create a misleading comparison with WWII, it can be safely ignored. If the audience doesn’t know that there is no such movement, it might sound plausible that Iran is a leading part of that movement. Once people realize that there are diverse, mutually antagonistic groups of Islamists in the world, that it is impossible for Iran to assume the leadership of the same movement that Al Qaeda led, and that it is painfully stupid to describe them in terms of European hyper-nationalism, it is possible to assess any threat from Iran a bit more rationally.

If Iran is the “greatest enemy we will ever face,” we don’t have much to worry about. If Iran is as threatening and dangerous as it will ever get, we can rest easy. Santorum went on:

“We cannot have a nuclear Iran — we cannot,” Santorum said. “There is no option here. A nuclear Iran changes the world forever. The life you lead today is not the life you’ll lead a day after Iran gets a nuclear bomb.”

It’s important to understand that there’s no prescience or understanding on display here. On the contrary, reviewing Santorum’s past statements about Iran reminds us that he doesn’t understand these issues very well at all. His 2006 rhetoric was just raw, pure fear-mongering of the worst kind, and this doesn’t even touch some of his more far-fetched worries about the threat to Latin America from Bolivia and Venezuela. It wasn’t only because of rhetoric like this that he lost five years ago, but it’s encouraging that it didn’t do him any good.

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