I can imagine some Obama supporters saying, in response to this post, that Obama doesn’t really believe those things; he’s just saying what he needs to say to get elected. And that as president he would certainly never go to war with Iran to prevent it from getting nukes.

First, we (or at least I) have no way of knowing if this is true. Second, the problem isn’t just what Obama believes deep in his heart. Just saying these things reinforces the story about Iran that the hawks have been propagating – that Iran is ruled by irrational crazies who are hellbent on acquiring nukes so they can launch a suicidal first strike on Israel. (Obama even repeats the notion that Ahmadinejad is some kind of supreme leader with total control over Iran’s foreign policy.) Just publicly endorsing this narrative helps grease the skids to war.

Needless to say, the exact same thing happened with Iraq. All the “respectable” people accepted the same basic storyline: that Saddam was a crazed and undeterrable despot feverishly working to build up his WMD arsenal. Once these basic outlines of the problem were generally accepted — that Saddam must be stopped — war was all but inevitable. Not least because no one with sufficient influence was willing to stand up and call b.s. on the whole thing.