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In the final days of the Pennsylvania primary, Hillary Clinton has played up her toughness on national security, airing an ad that features a shot of Osama bin Laden and a narrator who asserts "You need to be ready for anything," then asks, "Who do you think has what it takes?" The ad has garnered serious attention. What has flown under the radar, by comparison, in Clinton's national security attack is her shift in rhetoric on Iran.
Her remark in last week's debate that an Iranian attack on Israel would bring "massive retaliation" from the United States, which she repeated Monday in an interview, started it off. It was enough to make some wonder if she was talking about a nuclear attack. Despite protests from her campaign that she didn't mean she would nuke Iran, there was context to suggest, in yet another interview, that she meant precisely that. Tuesday morning, she said she would "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. This, after directly avoiding the question of what she would do with Iran if it attacked Israel in prior comments, saying that she doesn't answer hypotheticals.
If Clinton is trying to impress average Pennsylvania voters who are hawkish, this might work, but considering that some right-wing bloggers have said Clinton's rhetoric about a nuclear threat went too far, it might also constitute overkill. Given the alarm that her remarks have raised on the left, this has the potential to follow her around to other states, if it may have come too late in the Pennsylvania race. But my question is the same as this fellow's: What is her position, and how could the U.S.'s allies know from what she and her staff have said? |
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