Beyond preemption
The release of a new National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran doesn't have an active nuclear weapons program is good news on its own terms. And just as important, it signals that the hawks inside the Bush administration have lost. No U.S. airstrikes will be forthcoming.
The Democratic presidential candidates, naturally enough, took the opportunity to bash each other. Barack Obama released a statement calling it "an important reminder of what we learned with the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: Members of Congress must carefully read the intelligence before giving the president any justification to use military force." The reference is to a classified version of the NIE on Iraq that contained crucial caveats about Saddam Hussein's WMD programs -- and that Hillary Clinton, like the overwhelming majority of members of Congress, didn't bother to read.
Perhaps if she'd read it, she wouldn't have helped authorize the use of force in Iraq. Be that as it may, Clinton herself has observed that "if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."
All this raises the question of what the candidates would be saying if the new intelligence had gone the other way -- if the intelligence agencies had found evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program in Iran. That would have put the focus on the Bush administration's post-9/11 invention, the "preemption" doctrine, which asserts a U.S. right to use military force unilaterally against countries that have neither attacked another state nor have any clear plan to do so -- merely because, say, we feel nervous about its weapons programs.
The preemption doctrine flies in the face of international law, but President Bush and his team felt that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, traditional practice was obsolete. Do the Democrats agree? John Edwards doesn't. He gave a Nov. 5 speech calling Bush's preventive war doctrine "wrong on the merits, wrong on the morals and wrong for America."
What about the front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?
Obama's opposition to the Iraq war would seem to suggest that he opposes the doctrine. However, although his campaign has harped obsessively on Clinton's misguided 2002 vote for war, he's never broadened his argument and objected to the doctrine. Instead, his famous antiwar speech focused on practical problems, such as the need for a "U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost." On Iran, Obama has emphasized his eagerness to conduct direct diplomacy, but he has also always underscored that all options should be on the table.
