Updates will appear below

Tonight at 9pm EST, the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates will participate in a "debate" over foreign policy, in which the most difficult challenge for each will be to identify meaningful differences with the other. One expects them each to compete vigorously for the title of he who will will impose the greatest suffering on Iranian civilians, demonstrate the most fealty to the Israeli government or, as they affectionately call it, "Bibi" (Joe Biden: "with regard to Bibi, he's been my friend for 39 years! The president has met with Bibi a dozen times. He's spoken to Bibi Netanyahu as much as he's spoken to anybody"), and most ruthlessly pile up corpses in the Muslim world.

It should be greatly riveting and quite inspiring. Depending on how it unfolds and the questions that are (and are not) asked, I may live-blog the festivities in this space. Or I may post a reaction once it's done. Or I may write nothing until tomorrow morning. Whichever of those courses I embark upon, I encourage readers to use the comment section to live-blog the debate as it occurs.

For the moment, permit me to make one point about the two candidates' positions on Iran which has broad application to most of the issues likely to be debated tonight. It is true that Romney's war threats toward Tehran are broader and more aggressive than Obama's, in that the Republican has vowed to prevent Iran even from obtaining the "capability" to produce a nuclear weapon, while the incumbent Democrat has vowed to prevent only its "acquisition". That is not a trivial difference.

But if there is one thing the 2008 campaign should have permanently taught, it is that campaign rhetoric often bears little relationship to what a person will do once empowered. More important, it is almost certainly the case that an Obama-led attack on Iran would generate far more public support than a Romney-led attack, because most Democrats will almost certainly cheer for the former while pretending to be horrified by the latter, will while Republicans would support both (that's the dynamic that made the very same "counter-terrorism" policies that were so divisive in the Bush years become wildly popular once Obama embraced them).

That's true on the international level as well. Recall the 2008 CIA report fretting about growing anti-war sentiment in western Europe and concluding that the best weapon to safeguard against its continuation would be the election of Obama. That's because, the CIA presciently realized, Obama's election would massively increase public support for US wars because it would be a kind, sophisticated, progressive constitutional scholar rather than a swaggering, evangelical Texas cowboy who would be the face of them. Add to all that the Nixon-to-China dynamic - just as only a conservative president could have established relations with the Chinese Communists, arguably only a Democratic president could start a new war in the Muslim world, cut Social Security, etc. - and the picture is far more muddled than many like to depict it as being.

I'm not at all suggesting that a war with Iran would be more likely with Obama than with Romney. There are ample, reasonable grounds for concluding the opposite, including the fact that Obama has - whatever his motives - rather clearly served as some form of impediment against an Israeli attack.

But the point is that this is far from certain. Just as Obama was able to achieve more than Bush ever dreamed of achieving in terms of transforming extremist civil liberties theories into bipartisan consensus, the case could be made that Obama would be a more effective instrument in bringing about these policies than Romney would be, and would certainly unite the country more potently behind them, even if he is less committed to them rhetorically or even in substance than Romney the candidate claims to be.

Underscoring these points, Atrios earlier today wrote:

"I don't write much about the stuff Glenn Greenwald tends to focus on anymore, not because I'm trying to be a good little Obot, but because I find it all to be completely depressing and hopeless. Under a Republican administration you can expect some half-hearted objection to the National Security State and Empire from Democrats, and under a Democratic president there's seemingly no way to do anything about any of it. Most Dems - elected and voters - are happy to defer to Obama. And pretty soon [Romney] might control the flying death robots."

I empathize with those sentiments entirely, though I never find these kinds of situations hopeless. It may be a form of naiveté, but I believe in the power of reason, ideas and - especially - persuasion, as well as the ability of any structure built by human beings to be subverted - torn down and replaced - by other human beings if the right passion is invoked and the right strategy found. But the dynamic Atrios is describing there about what happens under a GOP President versus a Democratic one is undoubtedly accurate, and is the point I was making above.

Meanwhile, as ChicagoDaveM points out in comments, The New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch proposes a good question that he'd like to see asked at tonight's debate:

"President Obama, you run a very regular and deadly program of secretive targeted assassination by drone aircraft, and yet you have forbidden the use of coercive practices such as waterboarding in interrogation. So why is assassination O.K., but using force in an interrogation is out of bounds?"

Esquire's Tom Junod would like to hear this question:

"Your administration has not just employed targeted killing; it has made the case for targeted killing to the rest of the world. What would you tell the leader of another country who wants to make use not only of technology pioneered by America but also of legal arguments pioneered by America? Do those arguments only count for America, or do they count also for Russia, China, and well, North Korea and Hezbollah?"

If I could ask one question tonight of President Obama, it would probably be this one:

Prior to your election, Democrats - you included - spent years aggressively denouncing President Bush for claiming the power to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial review and imprison people without due process. And yet you have claimed not only those powers, but also the authority to assassinate people, including Americans, without any due process. How can you claim that it was wrong for President Bush merely to eavesdrop on or imprison people without judicial review, but it's permissible and lawful for you to do something much more extreme - target them for assassination - without any judicial review?

Please do not place any bets on any of those questions being asked.

By the way, the live-blogging is hereby deemed commenced. I won't add any more "update" designations at the top, but will simply add items throughout the night at the bottom, though I'm still not promising that there will be more.

Obama said that it is vital that any new government in Syria is "good for our allies in the region". I wonder who he means?

When asked whether he regrets calling for Mubarak to step down, Obama also said: "No, I don't. America must stand with democracy." And, presumably, with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE.

It's 27 minutes into the debate, and so far the two have agreed on far, far more than they've disagreed. In fact, I'm not certain that they have actually disagreed on anything yet.

"America remains the one indispensable nation", said President Obama. Not just "indispensable" - the "one" nation in the world that is. Hear us roar!!!

Both candidates are eager to ignore the topic of this debate - foreign policy - in order to talk about the economy because they perceive, accurately, that this is what most voters care about, and because they don't really have much to disagree in the foreign policy area. And so they are now dispensing with any pretense and regurgitating their economics debate.

But US foreign policy actually does have a significant relationship to the economy- namely, the massive military, the constant aggression, war and occupation, the hundreds of military bases around the world all drain resources away from far more constructive purposes - but neither of these two candidates will dare to question any of those imperial premises, so they can't actually address the prime economic impact of US foreign policy.

Obama boasts of the massive amount of military spending under his presidency. Romney then says he wants to spend more. It is inconceivable that anyone would suggest that spending almost more than all other countries on the planet combined is excessive. That is the election in a nutshell.

Bob Scheiffer demands to know whether each candidate would treat an attack on Israel as an attack on the US, as is done in NATO. Obama declares that "Israel is our greatest ally in the region" and then, in essence, provides that assurance: "if Israel is attacked, we will stand with Israel".

He's now boasting of how he has "crippled" Iran's economy and turned it into a "shambles".

Romney, too, said: "If Israel is attacked, we have their back - militarily". The festival of agreement continues.

Romney: "it's absolutely the right thing to have crippling sanctions", though he says he would have put them in even earlier and would "tighten" them now. Last week, the Guardian reported:



"Millions of lives are at risk in Iran because western economic sanctions are hitting the importing of medicines and hospital equipment, the country's top medical charity has warned. "Fatemeh Hashemi, head of the Charity Foundation for Special Diseases, a non-government organisation supporting six million patients in Iran, has complained about a serious shortage of medicines for a number of diseases such as haemophilia, multiple sclerosis and cancer."

I trust I don't need to say that none of that has been mentioned or even alluded to.

Romney and Obama just had a very stirring debate over who loves Israel most. Romney pointed out that Obama skipped Israel on his Middle East trip. Obama pointed out that he visited Israel and saw a Holocaust museum and visited towns where Hamas was shooting rockets.

I think it's fair to say that they both love Israel very, very, very much.

Obama just mocked Romney for saying, in 2008, that he would have asked for Pakistan's permission to use military force to get bin Laden. That's quite redolent of the mockery of John Kerry in 2004 by Bush that he wants a "permission slip" from the world before using military force.

Obama then told a story about how he talked to someone at Ground Zero whose father died on 9/11. That is quite redolent of everything that happened in 2004.

Almost every question moderator Bob Scheiffer is asking is a challenge from the right: will you stand by Israel if they're attacked? Will you still pull out troops from Afghanistan if the Taliban are strong, etc.? Meanwhile, Peter Beinart points out:

Just amazing how much israel discussion there's been w/ no mention of palestinians #dotheyexist #debate — Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) October 23, 2012

This debate is horrid, Obama is winning, and I doubt it will change a single vote.

Romney was just asked about drones, and he said: "I support that entirely, and feel the president was right to up our capabilities there, and we should continue to use it to go after those who pose a threat to this nation and our allies."

More fundamental agreement! It's so moving.

A primary reason this debate is so awful is because DC media people like Bob Scheiffer have zero interest in challenging any policy that is embraced by both parties, and since most foreign policies are embraced by both parties, he has no interest in challenging most of the issues that are relevant: drones, sanctions, Israel, etc.

That was just a wretched debate, with almost no redeeming qualities. It was substance-free, boring, and suffuse with empty platitudes. Bob Scheiffer's questions were even more vapid and predictably shallow than they normally are, and one often forgot that he was even there (which was the most pleasant part of the debate.)

The vast majority of the most consequential foreign policy matters (along with the world's nations) were completely ignored in lieu of their same repetitive slogans on the economy. When they did get near foreign policy, it was to embrace the fundamentals of each other's positions and, at most, bicker on the margin over campaign rhetoric.

Numerous foreign policy analysts, commentators and journalists published lists of foreign policy questions they wanted to hear asked and answered at this debate. Almost none was raised. In sum, it was a perfect microcosm of America's political culture.

Echoing a common refrain of progressives, Andrew Sullivan after the debate says that Obama has "restored America's moral standing in the world". I suppose one can say that if one excludes the entire Muslim world from "the world", as many do, because in that rather large and important part of the world, there has been no restoration of any kind. Quite the opposite. See, just as a beginning, here, here, here, and here.