Clinton Team's Testy Response To Edwards' Speech Against Sending More Troops...
Huffington Post | Melinda Henneberger | Posted January 15, 2007 04:43 PM
AP
John Edwards had a hard time getting through yesterday's anti-surge speech at Harlem's Riverside Church, repeatedly interrupted by cheering from the pews. Standing where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached against American involvement in Vietnam 40 years ago, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina declared that, "As he put it then, there comes a time - not just for Dr. King, but for all of us - when silence is betrayal.''
It is a betrayal to quietly countenance widespread poverty in the richest country in the world, he told a crowd of 1,200, and a betrayal to stand silent in the face of an AIDS epidemic ravaging a new generation of African children. With a Clintonian comfort level at the pulpit, he drew the most sustained ovation of the day when he said, "It is a betrayal not to speak out against an escalation of the war in Iraq.''
Edwards, who is running for president in '08, has not only opposed the president's plan to send 21,500 more troops into Iraq but has argued that it is time to bring 50,000 home. The only Senator mentioned in the speech was Arizona Republican John McCain, when Edwards called the plan the "McCain Escalation." But the speech was also an overt challenge to two of his likely competitors for the Democratic nomination in particular; New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama have criticized the president's proposal to but have not said they would go so far as to try and prevent it by cutting funding.
Like Clinton, who has not yet said she will run, and declared candidates including Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Edwards voted to authorize the use of force when he was in the Senate in 2002; all but Clinton have made clear that they now feel they were wrong to have done so.
And Edwards's second-biggest applause line at Riverside came when he again apologized for that vote: "The issue, brothers and sisters, is not only how we got into Iraq, but how we get out of Iraq. I want to say for anyone in this room that doesn't know it that I voted for this war and I was WRONG, and I take responsibility for that...The best way to make clear we're leaving Iraq is to actually start leaving.''
He exhorted ordinary citizens to demand that their government respond to them - just as President Bush has said the Iraqi government must respond to the will of its people: "You tell your elected leaders to block this misguided plan. You tell them that the reward of courage is trust.''
But his stiffest words were for his former Congressional colleagues: "Congress must step up NOW and stop this president from putting more troops in harm's way. Silence is betrayal! Speak out, and stop this escalation NOW, Congress. You have the power to prohibit the president from spending any money to escalate the war - use it!''
And Senator Clinton's campaign team seemed to think she resembled these remarks; after the speech, one of her closest advisers, Howard Wolfson, complained to The New York Times that "In 2004 John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today, he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration's Iraq policy.'' |
