Ezra Klein, one of my favorite lefty bloggers, is challenging liberal hawks to be more specific on whether or not they support military action against Iran. He thinks that their previous support for Iraq has made them gun shy and they are therefore carrying on an intellectually dishonest game of refusing to dialogue with liberal doves over any possible causus belli regarding Iranian nukes.

Today’s liberal hawks are engaged in a slightly subtler game. The Iraq war is an acknowledged catastrophe. The same group-think and bandwagon effects that once pushed them so irresistibly towards embracing the invasion is now similarly forceful in pulling them to abandon it. The question, for many, is how to finesse that flip without losing one’s reputation for unparalleled foreign policy seriousness. The answer is Iran.

The new approach is not to refight the battle over the Iraq war, but to argue that those who got it right, or who got it wrong but eventually came to the right answer, are now in danger of overlearning the lessons of the war—and missing the danger posed by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. An elegant entry into this burgeoning genre comes from Ken Baer in the latest issue of Democracy. “[A] president’s past mistakes,” writes Baer, “can so preoccupy political leaders that they lose sight of the dangers ahead or the principles they hold dear.” In the conclusion of his piece, he warns that progressives must “not use anger at one war as an excuse to blink when confronting a future threat head on.”

The liberal hawks’ exculpatory proof for their support of the Iraq war is based on what Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias termed “The Incompetence Dodge”: a focus on the war’s mismanagement and poor administration rather than on the question of whether it could have ever succeeded in the first place. The dodge enables opposition to the war’s continuation without a conceptual reevaluation of the war’s worth, which means there’s no conceptual reevaluation of preventative wars in the Middle East more generally. Now, in order to avoid turning the Iran question into just such a first-order conversation but instead use it for another round of more-serious-than-thou point-scoring, many liberal hawks are relying on a different tactic altogether: sheer vagueness.

First of all, any rational discussion of the case for going to war in Iraq must include the initial balance sheet of pluses and minuses. This, after all, is what serious people base serious decisions upon; evaluating the cost/benefit ratio of any potential actions in order to reach a reasonable conclusion about the chances for success or failure.

Put aside the knee jerk dove position that no war (save fighting off invasion of the United States) is worth fighting and indeed, is an immoral exercise in enforcing the will of the stronger over that of the weaker. May as well also closet the knee jerk neo-con argument that war is a necessary adjunct to the pursuit of American interests and that where there is any chance – Cheney’s “One Percent policy – that a nation state is a threat to the United States, that threat must be neutralized.

Both arguments are relatively simple minded and don’t really describe hawks and doves anyway. The question I am asking is prior to the invasion, was there a legitimate, defensible argument for going to war and overthrowing Saddam Hussein?

The answer is obviously yes. Doves might counter that they warned us of this dire consequence or that but the fact is, that’s Monday morning quarterbacking. The weight given to those specific probabilities prior to the invasion could have legitimately been much less for a hawk than it was for a dove. After all, there were many predictions about the war made by doves that turned out to be laughably – even incompetently – wrong. There were not 10,000 dead Americans coming home in body bags as a result of the predicted street fighting in the “Battle for Baghdad.” There were not thousands of dead Americans because Saddam used his chemical weapons. There were not millions of Iraqi refugees as a result of the fighting (what has transpired since is an entirely different matter with 750,000 internally displaced people, driven from their homes for sectarian reasons).

And there were as many as 5 different times that doves asserted as fact that Iraq was in a civil war beginning as soon as a month after Saddam’s statue fell in Baghdad. Even today, while the bloodletting on both sides of the sectarian divide is grim, Sunnis and Shias are serving in the army together as well as sitting side by side in a freely elected parliament – another dire prediction of failure by doves that never came true. There is certainly a civil war between some Sunnis and some Shias. But others are fighting to control that violence and begin the process of national reconciliation (would that they would get some help from the Iraqi government).

But does Klein have a point when he talks about “the incompetence dodge?” Is laying the blame for the current situation in Iraq on Bush or on any one of a variety of critiques that point up the perceived incompetence of the Administration or the Pentagon a legitimate reason to change one’s position and come out against the war? Again, we return to the continually evolving cost/benefit analysis for an answer. And there is now a legitimate, logical case that can be made that because of many mistakes and blunders made in the last 4 years by Bush and the military, the downside of staying in Iraq with our current force structure and mission has tipped the scales in favor of some kind of redeployment. Klein thinks that this kind of thinking doesn’t lead to “conceptualizing” the error of the hawk’s ways. I beg to differ. By constantly evaluating and re-evaluating the case for war, such analysis deepens understanding of both the original factors that animated the hawk’s initial position as well as fleshing out any change in thinking caused by changing circumstances in Iraq. The rigid kind of thinking espoused by Klein leaves no room for such flexibility.

But Klein isn’t necessarily arguing the illegitimacy of this change of heart among liberal hawks. Rather he connects “the incompetence dodge” with the lefty hawk’s vagueness on the issue of going to war with Iran as another sign of dishonesty:

The remarkable thing about the growing liberal hawk literature on Iran is its evasiveness—the unwillingness to speak in concrete terms of both the threat and proposed remedies. The liberal hawks realize they were too eager in counseling war last time, and their explicit statements in support of invasion have caused them no end of trouble since. This time, they will advocate no such thing. But nor will they eschew it. They will simply criticize those who do take a position.

Iran raises several complicated questions, but also a simple one: Do you think military force is called for in preventing Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons? Some, like me, say no. Some also, like me, do not believe the evidence supports the contention that Iran is a fully totalitarian society under the rule of a crazed and suicidal Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, and in fact think that such portrayals should be resisted and identified as part of a larger, pro-war narrative. This is how I ended up in Baer’s article as a convenient straw liberal who “excuse[s] the Iran regime, all the better to deny the very existence of a threat.”

Is Klein mistaking caution for “evasiveness?” In something of a surprise to me, Senator Obama has come out and said that the military option against Iran is not off the table. Clearly, some liberals – even those who could be called doves on the War in Iraq – can see that Iran is threatening enough that totally abandoning the military option would not be wise. And as far as I know, there are few serious advocates for military action against Iran who has made the case that Iran is “a fully totalitarian society under the rule of a crazed and suicidal Mahmoud Ahmadenijad…”

Ahmadinejad is a mystic – and a cipher. He is also, for lack of a better word, a fanatic who is using proxies throughout the Middle East to sow discord and kill innocents. And Iran’s Supreme Leader’s only check is the Assembly of Experts who can overrule him only if they can agree that his decrees run counter to the Koran. The fact that candidates for that body are chosen by The Guardian Council – half of whose membership is appointed by the Supreme Leader – means that you don’t get to run for the Experts Assembly unless you are pretty much in the Leader’s pocket.

While not a “totalitarian” government in the traditional sense, the power in the Iranian state is concentrated in very few hands. And the power of the Supreme Leader is enormous. Rival factions vie for his support and blessing, jockeying for position by trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, so to speak. And while Ahmadinejad has displeased Supreme Leader Khamenei with his over the top rhetoric at times, his anti-corruption campaign and now his cultural revolution has the Leader’s 100% backing.

None of this reveals intent. Just what does the Iranian regime intend to do with nukes if they get them. Israel doesn’t want to find out and will almost certainly attack – even if the prospects for success are slight. The Jewish state simply cannot afford to dismiss the Iranian President’s eliminationist rhetoric directed against Israel. And any Israeli attack will be seen as an attack by America by the Iranians. If that is to be the case, there would be tremendous pressure on Washington to either carry out the attack itself or assist the Israelis in their war effort. “In for a penny, in for a pound” rings true in this case. If the Iranian reaction to an attack by Israel would be the same whether we join in or not, we may as well assist the Israelis or carry out the attack ourselves to give it a better chance to succeed.

Whether Klein believes Iran is building nukes or not or whether he thinks they are a potential threat doesn’t matter in this case. There is no more important American ally in the Middle East than Israel. To abandon her at what she clearly feels is a moment of supreme danger would be a betrayal of monstrous proportions.

However, it should be pointed out that we have time to try other measures short of war. The latest news on the Iranian nuclear program is that simply put, they are stuck. They have been unable to grow their program and make the leap from the experimental enrichment of uranium to the industrial production necessary to construct a bomb. They could still be three years away from being capable of enriching enough uranium to high enough levels to build a nuclear device.

And sanctions are really beginning to bite. Beyond that, the threat of further sanctions has the Iranian economy in a tailspin that is causing great unease among the people. The recent crackdown on dissent as well as the announced return to 1979 revolutionary values is most likely a means to distract the people from what may be a faltering economy and a failure of leadership.

So liberal hawks, rather than being vague or evasive, sound to me as if they are simply exercising good judgement and remaining cautious. But Klein complains that this precludes engaging in argument and dialogue:

It is possible that some self-described progressives agree with them. If so, they should speak up, and we can have an argument. The mantra of “seriousness,” however, is disingenuous. Progressive intellectuals are not diplomats or politicians, actively in search of better positioning or a negotiating posture . Insofar as Iran is a serious foreign policy issue—and it is!—those who pride themselves on their seriousness in such matters should be honest in offering their answers. The “dovish” view is that a military campaign against Iran would be a seriously bad idea. It is a view shared by many generals, most foreign policy experts, and, according to some reports, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Liberal hawks seem to dispute that conclusion, but won’t quite say why. The danger of Iraq, it turns out, is not that too many liberals overlearned its lessons, but that too many liberals didn’t learn them at all—and instead have merely become more circumspect in their saber-rattling.

For those who object to that characterization, and whose public hawkishness is more of an affectation than a real substantive agenda, this is not a time for self-righteous posturing or rhetorical toughness; it is a time for those who do want to prevent war with Iran to, well, oppose war with Iran. That doesn’t mean supporting their nuclear ambitions, or developing a misplaced affection for an ugly regime. But it does mean speaking forthrightly about what a catastrophe a military attack would prove to be. Liberals, after all, do not control the government. George W. Bush is still the Commander in Chief. The best liberals can hope for, then, is to influence the discourse and shift the spectrum of opinion deemed “acceptable.” But they will be unable to do even that if they refuse to speak clearly.

I would say that it is not only a dovish view that military action against Iran would be a bad idea. As Klein points out, there are active duty military people who oppose an Iran strike. Unless West Point has gone soft on us, I hardly think you could make the claim that doves are the only ones resisting the call to battle the Iranians.

But Klein errs when he blames liberal hawks for proceeding more cautiously in their advocacy of military action against Iran than they did – in his mind anyway – with their support to take down Saddam. Is it really a case of sensitivity to the public perception that their “sabre rattling” got us in trouble with Iraq? Or is the case for war against Iran such a close call that it is difficult to formulate a position and stick with it?

I myself have been back and forth, hot and cold on war with Iran. The threat is real but by no means imminent – at least to the United States. But the idea that the only thing worse than attacking Iran would be Iran with nuclear weapons is still something serious people should think about carefully. I’m not sure that statement is true. Nor am I sure it isn’t. And my hesitancy is reflected, I think, by liberal hawks who are having a similarly hard time trying to evaluate the pluses and minuses. There are so many troubling elements to both the Iranian regime and the thought of attacking it that what Klein sees as a kind of disingenuousness on the part of liberal hawks is nothing more than a realization that the consequences of both action and inaction against the Iranian regime could be enormous.