MJ, I suppose that you are a proponent of Hillary Clinton and that you would be fine if Barack got the nomination. As far as I am concerned, I am a proponent of Obama and would be fine if the Democrats voted to have Hillary as the nominee. Having said that, I am posting this since I agree with the author that Hillary has a very convoluted thought process which is driven pruely by t he politics of the situation and the preservation of her power.
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Hillary Clinton
No apology on Iraq.
2/23/2007
Hillary Clinton’s advisors think that last week may “be remembered as a turning point in the race,” said Patrick Healy in The New York Times. They may well be right—but will it mark the day she proved to Democrats that she should be their nominee for president or sent them searching for an alternative? For months, Clinton had been under intense pressure from the party’s liberal activists to follow the lead of former Sen. John Edwards and “repudiate her 2002 vote authorizing military action in Iraq.” Last week, she “rolled out a new response to those demanding contrition.” Clinton told a crowd in New Hampshire that “if the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from.” If that gamble works, voters will see Clinton as principled and consistent—unlike, say, flip-flopping 2004 nominee John Kerry. But if Democrats prefer a more adamant anti-war candidate … well, there are others to choose from.
Good for Hillary, said James Klurfeld in Newsday. Her position on the war has been consistent since Day One—in fact, since before Day One. Don’t forget it was her husband, President Bill Clinton, who first called for regime change in Iraq. When President Bush took up the cry, Hillary duly supported him, though all the while stressing the danger of the U.S.’s acting without U.N. approval. When you look back at Clinton’s position on Iraq, said David Brooks in The New York Times, you see a senator who was hoping to force Saddam to disarm, but who properly deferred to the commander in chief on the decision to use force. To apologize now would be to utterly “forfeit her integrity.”
What integrity? said Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com. Hillary’s latest defense of her Iraq vote includes a self-serving dodge: The Bush administration, she contends, duped her with bogus intelligence about Saddam and his WMD. But for eight years, her husband’s administration received the same high-level intelligence briefings, which is why in 1998 the Senate passed the Iraq Liberation Act, making it U.S. policy to remove Saddam and his Baathist thugs from power. In 2002, Sen. Clinton gave “some of the tougher and better-argued speeches in favor of regime change.” For her to try and present herself now as an innocent victim of Bush’s deceit is the height of flip-floppery, and suggests that on the main issue of the day, Hillary Clinton is “not just highly unprincipled but also completely unserious.”
theweekmagazine.com |
