When Ignorance is Not Bliss

Jonathan Tobin isn't happy with George Will's reluctance to start a war with Iran:

It’s true that we don’t know exactly what will happen if tough international sanctions are placed on the regime led by Khamenei and Ahmadinejad or how best to aid the regime’s internal foes in creating a more democratic and less dangerous Iran. Nor can we be entirely sure what the result will be if strikes (whether they are “surgical” or more comprehensive) are launched against Iran’s nuclear plants.

But we do know what will happen if we seek to appease Tehran or fail to act. We will be facing a radical Islamist regime with nuclear capability that will present an existential threat to the State of Israel as well as a strategic peril to moderate Arab states and the West. Will seems to counsel inaction because he views neoconservative advocacy for action in averting such a disaster as antithetical to true conservatism. But rather than a clear-eyed look at the situation, such an unwillingness to face up to the danger of a nuclear Iran is neither an enlightened version of conservatism nor good public policy. It is, alas, merely an excuse to do nothing. The proper term for such a view is isolationism, not conservatism.

I don't believe Will is counseling "inaction" with respect to Iran because that's inherently more conservative (whatever that means) but because, as Tobin acknowledges, the people pushing for action (i.e. a war) don't know what they're talking about. The lesson of Iraq is instructive in this regard. A similar ignorance about the nature of the threat Saddam posed and the consequence of military action pervaded the case for the war in Iraq.

Tobin says "we know" what will happen if Iran goes nuclear. But of course, he knows no such thing.

No one knows what the consequence of a nuclear Iran would be just as no one knows what the outcome of a bombing campaign against Iran would be. If this was clear cut, we wouldn't be constantly arguing about it. But the presumption of Tobin is to take the most dangerous, most far-reaching step and then tar those who disagree with him as "isolationists."

But it's not "isolationism" (a basically non-existent force in American politics) to argue that the U.S. shouldn't launch another preventative war in the Middle East. Some would call it good sense.