"Never Cross A Shrew" Or "Pander To The Jews"?

Color me a skeptic on this one:

Hillary Clinton said that as president she would be willing to use nuclear weapons to “obliterate” Iran if that nation launched a nuclear attack on Israel.

Clinton would warn Iran’s leaders that “their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States,” Clinton said in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Monday.

On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, the Democratic presidential hopeful said American allies in the Middle East were being “intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran.” And she asserted that the U.S. must create a new “security umbrella” to reassure Israel and other allies that they would not be threatened by Iran.

She said she would assure those allies that “if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States, and hopefully our NATO allies, would respond to that.”

Clinton echoed those remarks in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday, saying: “In the next 10 years, during which [the Iranians] might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.

“That’s a terrible thing to say but … that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.”

Wow, I'll just bet that interview made KO's day.

Snideness aside (well, not really, but work with me here....), let's take a show of hands: Who can tell me why the substance of Mrs. Clinton's bellicose blustering won't work?

Anybody?  Buehler?  Is this thing on?

Alright, I'll come to the rescue again - but just this once....

1) She's tying a nuclear response to an Iranian nuclear attack against Israel to what is strongly implied as the approval of "our NATO allies".  And her insertion of the modifier "hopefully" suggests her view of how likely such approval would be.

2) Our Middle East allies are being "intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran" in large part because of her, and her opponent's, and her party's insatiable defeatism vis-a-vie Iraq.  C'mon, peeps, does anybody seriously believe that the same woman who calls newly-promoted CENTCOM commander David Petraeus a "liar" when he reports to Congress that the "Surge" strategy is working, the same woman who continues to demand that we abandon Iraq (and Afghanistan would be next), the same woman who advocates still more negotiations and "diplomacy" vis-a-vie the mullahgarchy and its nascent nuclear weapons program, would turn around after having done everything possible to help Tehran get the nukes with which to obliterate Israel and retaliate against the attack they've been saying for years they're going to launch once they get them?  She can't stomach a few thousand "insurgency"-inflicted American casualties but she'll push a button and eradicate millions of Iranians?  Riiiiiight.

3) She presumes that the mullahs are rational players, rather than the crazy theocrats they truly are.  Threaten them with "massive retaliation" and they'll be "deterred" from attacking Israel.  Well, mayhap they would and mayhap they wouldn't, but given the apocalyptic fetish of their current frontman, and what it says about their mentality, I wouldn't bet on a whole lot of rationality coming from down Tehran way.

And to flip over the rationality argument, is it not logical to assume that the Iranians are constructing nuclear weapons for precisely the reasons that they are openly telling us?  To wipe out Israel - and, I might add, bring us, America, "The Great Satan," to our knees?  Adolph Hitler told the world what he planned to do in a memoir, and nobody paid attention - both because he seemed like a kook and because once he had the power to carry out his, well, apocalyptic agenda, nobody wanted to face the possibility that, yes, he really meant it.  Ahmadinejad, his spiritual descendant, is telling us to our collective face that he plans to "wipe Israel off the map," and is feverishly closing in on the means to do so.  He gives every indication of welcoming the idea of igniting a nuclear conflagration, believing that will bring down the "twelfth imam," the Shiite Muslim "messiah."

Bottom line: It is as unlikely that Iran can be deterred from its apocalyptic course as it is that the mullahs would take Senator Clinton's threat seriously.  They've got consistency on their side, a trait that is as foreign to that barracuda as spousal fidelity.

I think Her Nib's frothing is pure triangulation designed to make her sound tough on national security while laying the groundwork for allowing the Iranians to get their nukes, after which invading Iran and toppling the mullahgarchy as we did to Saddam Hussein in Iraq would no longer be a viable option.

And when Tehran does launch their nukes at the Jewish state?  Let's just say even Squishy Olmert will retaliate - or even pre-empt - this attack before the Empress can even drag her fat ass out of bed at 3AM to send the diplomats into "battle" yet again.

UPDATE: Doesn't "We'll obliterate Iran if they nuke Israel" sound an awful lot like when Mr. Bill declared thirteen years ago that North Korea using their nukes would result in "the extinction of their country" - not even a month before he cut a deal with the NoKos to give them more economic aid plus two light water nuclear reactors (that proved invaluable to their nuclear weapons program)?