It never occurred to me that someone would try to defend Pawlenty’s unfortunate Iran/Iraq blunder from last week, but here’s John McCormack giving it his best shot:

Yes, Pawlenty referred to Iraq as Iran multiple times, even after saying “You’re talking about Iran?” But considering the noise and the convoluted question, the gaffe wasn’t much of a gaffe. To anyone who’s spent three minutes talking to Pawlenty about foreign policy, Chait’s suggestion that the former Minnesota governor has difficulty grasping the difference between Iraq and Iran is pretty ridiculous.

All right, let’s be generous and assume that someone aspiring to become President of the United States eight years after the invasion of Iraq understands the difference between Iran and Iraq. That’s very reassuring! As Chait notes, he didn’t just get the name of the country wrong, but rattled off an entire answer about Iraq to a question about Iran. If Pawlenty knows the difference between the countries, he kept it well-concealed in this encounter.

The reporter had a slight accent, and the question wasn’t as clear it might have been, but it was not all that convoluted. The reporter was asking Pawlenty to reconcile the U.S. desire to contain Iran with one of the effects of the Iraq war, which is that Iran now has greatly increased influence in Iraq. Even though Pawlenty’s rehearsed answer could have been tied into answer addressing Iranian influence in the region (“U.S. forces need to remain in Iraq beyond the end of the year to prevent Iran from dominating it”), he didn’t make that connection. He may not have even understood the premise that the Iraq war has made Iran more influential inside Iraq. In fairness, his answer took less than a minute. Perhaps it takes the full three minutes for Pawlenty’s foreign policy expertise to become apparent.

Setting aside Pawlenty’s blunder, let’s consider the substance of the answer that he gave. If we grant that he meant to refer to Iraq and Iraqis and got his wires badly crossed, that doesn’t make the answer much better. Pawlenty believes that U.S. forces should remain in Iraq (though he said Iran) beyond the end of this year, and he said the U.S. should accept an invitation from the Iraqis (whom he called Iranians) if they invite our forces to stay. This is the position one would expect from a hawkish Republican, and it happens to match up with what Gates has recommended, and it is also a terrible idea. In addition to the fact that the Iraqi government absolutely wants U.S. forces gone by the end of the year, it is more than likely that a new insurgency would start up if U.S. forces remained beyond that date. More important than Pawlenty’s confusion is that he is endorsing an unwise proposal to keep American soldiers in Iraq beyond the date agreed upon by the U.S. and Iraq.