Hillary Strangelove

FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN
Imagine the fuss if Barack Obama had pledged to "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. He'd be regarded as green, unready for the presidency, prone to hyperbole, untested and unvetted. If his comment had rattled key allies, from Saudi Arabia to Britain, the critics would have pounced. And yet Senator Clinton's extreme rhetoric in the Philly debate was barely noted by the media. And some say she gets no respec.

GLOBE EDITORIAL
Hillary Strangelove
April 27, 2008

AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC's "Good Morning America" that, if she were president, she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran attacked Israel.

This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.

Responding with understatement to a question in the British House of Lords, the foreign minister responsible for Asia, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, said of Clinton's implication of a mushroom cloud over Iran: "While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequences of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is probably not prudent in today's world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country."

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