Candidates won't say, however, whether they'd send troops if Israel were attacked.
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JPOST CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTONobama mccain debate 224.88(photo credit: AP)
Neither presidential candidate directly addressed whether he would send troops in support of Israel if Iran attacked it - despite being asked if they would during their second debate Tuesday night.
They also reiterated their opposition to a nuclear Iran, and rehashed many of the same arguments from their previous debate and that of their running mates.
Polls after their second of three encounters found that voters thought Democratic candidate Barack Obama beat Republican challenger John McCain, in some cases by more than a 10-point margin. That didn't help McCain re-establish his footing after several recent polls have shown him to be trailing his competitor.
While they tangled on taxes, energy and Iraq - though with few personal attacks and little rancor - they both at different points stressed that the US must not allow another Holocaust to take place.
"If we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?" Obama asked in response to a question of when America should use the military to intervene for humanitarian reasons.
"When genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us. And so I do believe that we have to consider it as part of our interests, our national interests, in intervening where possible."
And McCain, referring to the threat Iran poses to Israel, declared, "We can never allow a second Holocaust to take place." An undecided voter at the town hall-style event in Nashville, Tennessee had asked the candidates if they would commit troops in such a scenario or wait for approval from the United Nations Security Council.
McCain responded that "we obviously would not wait for the United Nations Security Council" because of the likely obstinacy of Russia and China, but didn't specifically address whether he would take American military action.
Obama agreed that "we don't provide veto power to the United Nations or anyone else in acting in our interests," and did say that "we will never take military options off the table." But he also didn't state whether American troops would be come to Israel's defense.
Both candidates stressed that Iran shouldn't be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
"It's a great threat. It's not just a threat to the state of Israel. It's a threat to the stability of the entire Middle East," McCain declared.
Yet he referred specifically to Israel when he said, "What would you do if you were the Israelis and the president of a country says that they are determined to wipe you off the map, calls your country a stinking corpse?"
Obama, for his part, pledged that, "We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. It would be a game-changer in the region. Not only would it threaten Israel, our strongest ally in the region and one of our strongest allies in the world, but it would also create a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists." He added, "It's unacceptable. And I will do everything that's required to prevent it."
Both called for tougher sanctions on Iran but clashed on whether to engage Iran directly, a running argument between the two. McCain criticized Obama for his willingness to hold talks without preconditions.
Obama defended the need for tough diplomacy, saying such talks would be used to "deliver a tough, direct message to Iran" that if it didn't change its tactics, there would be dire consequences.
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