Hypotheticals

Brian Beutler's upset that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards wouldn't answer hypothetical questions about the use of nuclear weapons in Pakistan:

Seriously, though! How much value do Clinton and Edwards really place on keeping alive the (psychotic) possibility that either of them will resort to using nuclear weapons as an anti-terror tactic? If it's important to maintain stability in Pakistan by not instilling its people with the fear of an atomic strike, then the thing to do is say there won't be an atomic strike; it is not to imply that the nuclear option is a remote possibility by refusing to make pronouncements about hypothetical questions with obvious answers.

In Clinton's case, though, her refusal to answer the question isn't about the question. It's about a line of attack she's opened on Obama to the effect of his commensensical statement that he won't drop nukes on al-Qaeda training camps demonstrates a lack of experience. It's too much common sense, you might say, and not enough training in high-level executive branch doublespeak. I think that's a pretty silly line of attack, but they're sticking with it.

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I insist that somebody explain to me why you have to have your comment approved at mcardale's blog but not yglesias' ??!! WTF? It's all the same god-damn magazine. For chrissakes! Does she hate democracy or something??

Posted by Johnson | August 21, 2007 8:59 AM

Maybe she just hates you. Or maybe it's a new Atlantic policy--you must have previously posted an approved by the blog author comment or your new comments will be held pending approval--designed to stop spam.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 21, 2007 9:04 AM

It's about a line of attack she's opened on Obama to the effect of his commensensical statement that he won't drop nukes on al-Qaeda training camps demonstrates a lack of experience. It's too much common sense, you might say, and not enough training in high-level executive branch doublespeak. I think that's a pretty silly line of attack, but they're sticking with it.

The indistinct pronoun references ("to the effect of his...statement," among others) here make it hard to tell whether Matt's agreeing with Beutler or not.

If Matt's disagreeing with Beutler, though, I agree with Matt. The hypothetical-questions-about-extremely-improbable events that have come up so far in the debates seem aimed at turning the discussion from a policy debate to a rhetorical circle-jerk.

Posted by James Gary | August 21, 2007 9:18 AM

For discussions regarding the non-military governance of this country, it is what I am NOT hearing that concerns me.

Not one Dem candidate has stated (nor has he/she been asked, which also is of concern) that he/she would, upon taking office, absolutely, unequivocally, renounce any and all executive power-grabs that has been the unfortunate hallmark of the current Administration.

This entire 'unitary executive' business, and penchant for disregarding duly-enacted legislation, is more of a threat to our constitutional republic than is any terrorist. The grasshoppers are quite loud on this issue.

Posted by terraformer | August 21, 2007 9:28 AM

What's going on with your Rose post? I've got it in your RSS feed, but not on this site. I get a 404 when I click the link in the feed...

Posted by JJ | August 21, 2007 9:29 AM

Regarding Beutler's argument, ugh.

Of course it's wise to avoid discussing specific nuclear hypotheticals because they open the door to other nuclear hypotheticals. If you want to rule out nuclear hypotheticals in regards to Pakistan, then you have to face questions about a million other nuclear hypotheticals.

This is why Obama retracted his hypothetical thirty seconds after saying it.

Hillary is trying to use Obama's statement in an intellectually dishonest manner to make a sleazy political point. But Beutler shouldn't drag Edwards into this mess in his effort to justify what even Obama realized was a mistaken line of argument.

Posted by Petey | August 21, 2007 9:45 AM

Matt has a little problem common to many, especially on the Left, and Obama's - that the only Islamist danger is the 4-5 guys left, now hiding in caves in Pakistan...because they attacked us.

Ergo, since only 4-5 guys are "the threat", not any other radical Islamists, this school of thought holds it would be insaaaane!!! to ever NOT take nukes off the table when discussing future actions, because only 4-5 guys in caves don't warrant a nuclear strike.

To her credit, and Edwards and Biden's - Hillary is smarter than that. We don't know if Musharraf will last or be deposed by Islamists as radical as the Taliban. In that case we would require assurances and the confidence that Pak's 60+ nuclear weapons remained in verifiable storage, in adult hands - that the Islamists would not attack India, nor give any fission weapons to Jihadi combat teams for use on India, Israel, The West.
Lacking those assurances, Hillary would have to go through the UN or intervene directly, militarily. In such circumstances, if Pak is engaged in activities to disburse nuke bombs to Jihadis or threatening use against us, darn right she, Biden, Edwards - like Bill Clinton was right to - to never take nuke weapons off the table.
Good deterrance saves lives.

When the enemy or potential enemy is assured Obama-style, that you would never, ever use nukes - that sort of widens the possiblities radical Islamists in Pakistan are allowed to speculate about....

Posted by Chris Ford | August 21, 2007 9:47 AM

When the enemy or potential enemy is assured Obama-style, that you would never, ever use nukes - that sort of widens the possiblities radical Islamists in Pakistan are allowed to speculate about....

Whereas if we do vow to wipe entire civilizations off the map, "radical Islamists" will moderate their behavior. Because they're so afraid to die, and so greatly fear conflicts which wipe out civilizations. Great theory.

There is absolutely no value in this discussion. We're never nuking Pakistan. It's never happening. Everyone knows this. If a candidate says they will consider it, all that tells you is that they want you to think they're the kind of person who would consider it. Which essentially means they want to cultivate the image that they're insane. Strange, but I'm no campaign consultant.

Posted by Jake H. | August 21, 2007 10:19 AM

What I don't understand is why America can't think staright about this issue. Al Quada is not deterable. You can not shoot and kill your way to victory. You can not menace with a nuke an expect better behavior. You can not use a nuke and expect to have 'won' because of your use of awsome explosives.

It is a war of ideas and influence, yet still America fights like this is WWII or something. It's a recipe for American defeat. When is anyone going to articulate what it will take to win. Anyone.

Posted by Northern Observer | August 21, 2007 10:32 AM

Chris Ford,

Obama was talking specifically about using nuclear weapons to take out terrorist targets when he ruled out using them to attack terrorists. He was not talking about a situation where a nation state commits acts of aggression against other states using nuclear weapons, either by launching them directly or by supplying terrorists with them. Using nuclear weapons against Pakistan in this situation is not an example of using nuclear weapons to take out terrorists. Rather, it is an example of good old Cold War style nuclear retaliation against a belligerant nation state.

Stop conflating fighting terrorism (which is transnational and stateless in nature) with fighting belligerant nation states, and stop conflating the threat posed by AQ with the threats posed by other portions of radical Islam. Radical Islam is not a monolith, and not all of radical Islam is at war with the West. In fact, as the Iraqi sectarian civil war shows, much of radical Islam is at war with other parts of radical Islam. Sunnis jihadists want to kill Shite jihadists, and Arab Jihadists want to kill Iranian jihadists (Just in case you didn't know, Iranians are not the same ethnic group as Arabs. You may view Arabs & Iranians as being interchangeable ragheads, but they certaintly don't.)

BTW, Chris, you are the only person who is foolish to believe that there are only 4-5 AQ leaders & operatives in the Pakistan border region.

Posted by eltoro | August 21, 2007 10:58 AM

The possibility of our U.S. leaders using nuclear weapons against our own domestic U.S. population should not be unilaterally and unequivocally removed from 'the table', since it is only our fear that our betters will nuke us that keeps us well behaved.

Posted by El Cid | August 21, 2007 11:11 AM

When the enemy or potential enemy is assured Obama-style, that you would never, ever use nukes - that sort of widens the possiblities radical Islamists in Pakistan are allowed to speculate about....

Y'know, a citizen might wonder where the hell that 2/3's trillion dollar DoD budget is going, when the best option the whole arsenal provides is scorched earth. Something seems to be amiss with the planning. But Jake H is correct. I know it's psychologically rewarding for a certain kind of person to waggle nuclear swords and pretend to be tough, but it's sophomoric.

On the whole, the Democratic debate was another thoroughly depressing performance. Kucinich and Gravel were the only two who deigned to discuss reality on this planet -- and they were routinely cut off by that Stephanopolos media whore. Also, I didn't know that Biden is even more of a pompous self-loving windbag than I suspected. That's kind of impressive, in a way......

Posted by sglover | August 21, 2007 11:18 AM

By the way, can someone tell me where this "table" is that is apparently large enough to either contain all our nuclear weapons (numbering in the thousands) or all of our 'military options'?

It must be a really big table.

And if a politicians takes our nukes "off the table", do the nukes like, vanish into the Phantom Zone, leaving our spatial dimensions?

Does it mean that suddenly all the nukes have become invisible, so that other countries don't know we still have them?

"Ha! We'll get the foolish Americans now, they are all vulnerable since they took their nuclear weapons off the table, and once off the table you can't use them anymore!"

Posted by El Cid | August 21, 2007 11:44 AM

Brian Beutler's upset that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards wouldn't answer hypothetical questions about the use of nuclear weapons in Pakistan

What's absurd about Hillary's position is that she wouldn't be asked this question if she hadn't attacked Obama for answering it in the first place.

Posted by Jinchi | August 21, 2007 11:56 AM

I wonder if Hillary is beginning to regret going after Obama on this in the first place. It highlights a major difference between the two candidates and in the end Obama wins on points.

Initially all the news reports were favorable to her. Everyone in the media agreed that simply talking about this showed Obama's "inexperience".

But the more people hear about it the more people realize that, inexperienced or not, they agree with Obama's position.

Asked the question: "Should we go after bin Laden if we discover his location?" most Americans would answer "Yes".

That's been the stated policy of the U.S. since 2001.

At the same time, most Americans would answer "No" if asked "Would you drop the bomb on Pakistan?".

Certainly the majority of Democratic primary voters would.

Who would answer "No" to the first question and "Maybe" to the second?

Posted by Jinchi | August 21, 2007 12:17 PM

I think it's a little different. Supporting the use of nukes = tough. Hillary will always position herself as tough, even if it involves endorsing the murder of tens of thousands of people with nuclear weapons.

It's either because she's afraid of not getting elected if she doesn't sound tough (in which case she is unqualified to be President) or, more likely, that she holds the same foreign policy views as neoconservatives (in which case ditto).

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 21, 2007 12:32 PM

It's either because she's afraid of not getting elected if she doesn't sound tough

Look, HRC is wretched, but what you're describing is endemic to Democratic and American politics in general. It's not like Hillary's the only one contorting herself into ludicrous postures.

Posted by sglover | August 21, 2007 12:38 PM

What I don't understand is why America can't think staright about this issue. Al Quada is not deterable.

Of course they are deterrable. All rules of war are reciprocal. One side is in the breech, the other side does not have to give an unfair advantage to their killers out of the kindness of our hearts. If radical Islam, not the small offshoot of it, AQ, is undeterrable with our current self-imposed restraints, slowly, or all at once, those restraints can be shed away. Assymetric warfare only works when one side accepts it should be bound by humanitarian constraints. Those constraints, like Geneva, are not mandatory. They are not written in stone.

You can not shoot and kill your way to victory.

Sure you can. That is how wars are won. If you face assymetric warfare, you can elect to either win the hearts and minds of civilians, or treat them like Apaches or Boers.

You can not menace with a nuke an expect better behavior. You can not use a nuke and expect to have 'won' because of your use of awsome explosives.

I'd say if you obliterate the enemy, odds are you won. It worked for Rome with Carthage. And 2 tiny primitive nukes did wonders for changing Japanese militarist behavior.

Esper - Supporting the use of nukes = tough. Hillary will always position herself as tough, even if it involves endorsing the murder of tens of thousands of people with nuclear weapons.

Every President since Truman has supported use of nukes in America's defense in certain circumstances, or laid out clear thresholds where they might be used on an enemy to establish deterrence and prevent war. Every President. Even Carter the wuss.
And Hillary or Romney WILL use nukes if America is attacked with a major use of WMD - and the number of enemy soldiers and their families and friends KILLED, not "murdered", could well be in the millions if that is what it took to defend America or NATO/Japan/Australia and end the threat..

Posted by Chris Ford | August 21, 2007 1:26 PM

"Sure you can. That is how wars are won. If you face assymetric warfare, you can elect to either win the hearts and minds of civilians, or treat them like Apaches or Boers."

Yeah, let's just nuke the Middle East and be done with it...

Posted by Korha | August 21, 2007 2:12 PM

sglover:

The Iraq War has changed all that. You don't have to be the biggest hawk to get elected. Not only that, but it's a very good time to punish the big hawks so that the calculus works a little different next time.

If we can't do it now, we can't do it ever, and if we can't do it ever, prepare for perpetual war and death.

Posted by Dilan Esper | August 21, 2007 2:40 PM

"Look, HRC is wretched, but what you're describing is endemic to Democratic and American politics in general. It's not like Hillary's the only one contorting herself into ludicrous postures.

Posted by sglover | August 21, 2007 12:38 PM"

Who else among the major candidates is doing this as much as her among the Democrats? Both Obama and Edwards are ahead with her in that regard.

"

"Sure you can. That is how wars are won. If you face assymetric warfare, you can elect to either win the hearts and minds of civilians, or treat them like Apaches or Boers."

Well, what exactly were those lands about? Land grabs. Whites wanted Apache land and committed genocide and British wanted land that the Afrikaaners had been living on for years and put them in concentration camps. It was during the Boer War that Afrikaaner guerrillas developed many modern terrorist and guerrilla-style techniques, such as pipe bombs. The camps also helped to create the seige mentality among the anti-British Afrikaaners that led to apartheid. What you ignore are three major changes between then and now 1) military technological change that makes creating a terrorist group easier and pulling off attacks easier 2) the Kalashnikov Revolution: the spread of small arms worldwide, especially into western Pakistan and 3) symbiotic changes in information technology and the emergence of new forms of identity based in the European nationalist and religious experience that have been exported to the former colonial world. It is simply harder to pull off an occupation today because nationalism and pan-religious identity are stronger currents than they were at the beginning of the rise of modern European colonialism. Israel, for example, would have an easier time controlling the Palestinian Territories in the 1700's than today.

The "no gloves" approach doesn't have the best track record. Perhaps the biggest example of a "no gloves" approach would be the Rwandan genocide. The Presidential Guard in Rwanda conceived of the genocide as a way of destroying any power and support base for the Tutsi-dominated RPF. They killed off around 80% of the Tutsis in 100 days and were not hampered by foreign interventions by the US or NATO (and arguably received French help). However, they still lost the war, their soldiers and volunteers were driven into refugee camps and across the border into the former Zaire and today the Rwandan political elite is disproportionately Tutsi. The time for your view of warfare is long gone. You know, most people think becoming more evolved and moral is a good thing and can actually increase our power. Do you think it was primarily American brutality that won us the Cold War or the fact that people in Eastern Europe looked first at Moscow, then at DC and New York and knew which one they preferred?

Posted by Reality Man | August 21, 2007 3:14 PM

We also shouldn't forget about the problem of self-fulfilling prophesies. If you're living in Waziristan and hear that the President of the US is considering nuking you for what a bunch of guys from Saudi Arabia are doing in a cave, how are you going to react? For one thing, you aren't going to look to favorably on the US. Some people will likely respond by joining AQ in those caves.

Posted by Reality Man | August 21, 2007 3:37 PM

The whole "i won't answer hypotheticals" is just a freakin' dodge and they should be called out on it! Isn't the whole point of a campaign to answer hypothetical questions about what you would do IF you were president. In fact, the whole premise of a campaign is based on the hypothetical that the candidates would be elected in the first place. So to refuse to answer some questions, and then not others because they're "hypothetical" is inherently dishonest. Basically, they're saying, "I will answer hypotheticals, just not this one."

Posted by freaktown | August 21, 2007 3:45 PM

Chris Ford,

The one shortcoming of your analysis about using nuclear weapons against AQ and other national security threats posed by radical Islam is that in your zeal to use nukes to destroy the enemy, you will kill a lot of innocent people in the Muslim world also. You won't just be killing the radical Islamists. (Just in case you didn't realize, nukes don't have the ability to tell the difference between radical Islamists and normal Muslims.)I figured that you were irrationally bloodthirsty, but I didn't realize how much. Premptive war isn't enough for you; you want premptive genocide also.

It is one thing to reserve using nuclear weapons against other nuclear powers (including Islamic ones) who may use them against us, either through a direct launch or by supplying terrorists with such weapons. It's another thing to prescribe using nuclear weapons to fight terrorism fueled by the amorphous & ill-defined threat that you put under the label of radical Islam. Either you have no concern for the innocent Muslims who will be killed as a result of such a strategy, and you are one of those raghead haters who views all Muslims interchangeably.

Posted by eltoro | August 21, 2007 8:54 PM

Eltoro - your problem is you are locked into memes of innocence or guilt as applied to warfare.

The citizens roasted in Hamburg were "innocent" but so too were the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, for the most part.

The Iraqis I helped kill in the Gulf War were people that would have killed me without hesitation and would have happily grabbed all the Kuwaiti wealth they could. They were also "innocent". Likely Draftees and reluctant officers with families who had no criminal records. Nor were they killed in a strict "self defense" situation. They were just sitting about or in their armor clueless that they had been spotted and 4 F-16s were inbound with cluster bombs.
Ka-Blamm! End of them. And their lives were no less important or good than civilian ones, and they weren't there by choice. Their bad luck. My commendation letter..

In war, almost all of the people that have to suffer and die are "innocent" by any ethical system in use.

Deterrance is based on the premise that if you kill our innocents - soldiers or civilians - we will retaliate. We will try by rules established to spare large civilian populations, but those self imposed rules go away when we see cities on our side obliterated or strategic warfare calls for eradicating civilian production facilities and logistics that feeds the enemy military. And if an unacceptably significant threat emerges, if attack is imminent...it is stupid to wait until you are actually attacked to defend yourself.

(I liken it to you racking a shotgun when confronting a trespasser..if they don't bail and show they heed the deterrence but show they have a gun and won't back down, you don't wait for them to shoot. You put them down.)

That is not bloodthirsty, but real life. Lefties are not trusted to defend other's security because they empathize with the enemy and obsess over matters of enemy innocence or guilt under a criminal justice template. And say stupid things like "just because the Soviets said they would nuke 20 US cities does not give us the moral right to threaten to retaliate, let alone actually "hurt innocent Soviet civilians".

Same with radical Islam. Their civilians may suffer for the actions of their Jihad combat elements. That is their choice, not ours.

Posted by Chris Ford | August 21, 2007 11:48 PM

Chris Ford, you still are trapped in a state-based approach to war. You write, "Deterrance is based on the premise that if you kill our innocents - soldiers or civilians - we will retaliate." However, people living in western Pakistan are not AQ's innocents or civilians. They are a rogue element made up largely of Saudis and Egyptians hold up in western Pakistan. As such, the type of deterrence you're referring to here doesn't apply unless you buy into some AQ-style BS about there being an umma in which the nation-state and tribal identity are non-existent, which mean being into AQ's own propaganda as a way to understand Muslims. There is a government in Pakistan. They are the ones responsible for the Pakistani civilians and innocents. American rhetoric on this only helps to make the Pakistani government's hold on power more tenuous. For instance, when Jerry Falwell called Mohammed a Satanic child molester, in neck-to-neck local races in the western part of Pakistan, the Islamists only had to say that 1) Jerry Falwell was connected to Bush ideologically and socially 2) that Bush was the president of the US and 3) that Bush had promised a crusade against evil in neighboring Afghanistan. Guess who won those elections?

You're trapped in a self-fulfilling prophesy. You're talking about genocide. Don't weasel you're way out of this by talking about your experience in the Gulf War. That is only relevant if you believe you were somehow committing preventive nuclear genocide in Iraq. Such an event would be unprecedented in human history. You are talking about detonating a nuclear weapon in the second-largest Muslim nation and the only one with nukes and one that borders nuclear states like India and China and is near Russia. China borders and Russia is near North Korea, which is also nuclear. Japan can go nuclear very quickly and it will for its own protection if a nuke goes off somewhere, especially if it goes off anywhere in Asia. How do you think North Korea, China, Russia and India will react if such an event happens? If you want to unite the rest of the world against the US for the next century, nuke a bunch of civilians. This is how Goliaths fall. That would be the end of American power. We would be seen as the next Nazi Germany, believing it could use its technology to commit genocide at will. We may be powerful, but the rest of the world united would be more powerful.

Posted by Reality Man | August 22, 2007 12:13 AM

Chris,

I don't empathize with the enemy. I'm simply pointing out that if you use nukes to blow up terrorists, you're going to kill a hell of a lot of people who AREN'T our enemies. Unlike Nazi Germany or even Baathist Iraq, Al-Qaeda is not a nation state mobilized for war against us. Again, you are guilty of conflating the threats from transnational & stateless organizations with threats that emanate from hostile nation-states. Are you so bloodthirsty that you will kill scores of people who are not our enemies in order to get at a handful who are, or are you simply one of those people who view all people in the Muslim world as being a bunch of interchangeable ragheads?

To go back to your metaphor about defending against a home invader, what you are proposing is the equivalent of using a machine gun to shoot at a burglar who breaks into your apartment, needlessly causing the death of many of your neighbors in the process. Neighbors who are not your enemies, who are not in collaboration with the invader, and who were also threatened by that same burglar.

To blithely ignore the consequences of such actions, especially when you can achieve your goal of destroying the intruder through means that don't create that level of collateral damage, means that is you that empathizes with the enemy. In particular, you empathize with the enemy's "us vs them" worldview and ends-justifies-the-means sense of morality. Quite simply, Chris, you have the moral sense of a jihadist. (No wonder why you are so eager to go to war with every aspect of radical Islam, even the aspects that are at war with each other.)

Posted by eltoro | August 22, 2007 1:51 AM