I attended a debate between Harvard Prof. Steven Walt and veteran neo-conservative and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Joshua Muravchik at the Nixon Center Thursday evening. Most notable for the unfortunately abbreviated time I was there was Muravchik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainty that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if McCain is president, there will be an attack on Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear facilities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The way he said this also conveyed that it could well be item number one on McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s agenda.<\/p>\n
He also asserted that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153McCain is by history more of a neo-con than Bush\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (no quarrel there) and noted that his service as chair of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a creation and beneficiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), helped steer him in that direction. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would expect from McCain policies (that) I would like,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said just before his observation about McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intentions vis-a-vis Iran. <\/p>\n
I would have to take Muravchik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prediction seriously given his long-time perch at AEI, McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s favorite foreign-policy think tank, and his long association with some of McCain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s closest advisers, including Robert Kagan with whom he has worked since their Central America days. (Incidentally, Kagan, as well as Abrams, may be vying for the National Security Advisor post in any McCain administration.) Of course, bombing Iran has been a devout and explicit wish<\/a> on Muravchik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part for nearly two years if not more, so this may be an example of wishful thinking, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but believe his associations give him some real insight on this question. Kagan, however, has supported<\/a> unconditional talks with Iraq if for no other reason than to strengthen the case for eventual military action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I attended a debate between Harvard Prof. Steven Walt and veteran neo-conservative and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Joshua Muravchik at the Nixon Center Thursday evening. Most notable for the unfortunately abbreviated time I was there was Muravchik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainty that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if McCain is president, there will be an attack on Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nuclear facilities.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4713,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712\/revisions\/4713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4712"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}