Hillary Goes Orwellian on Iraq

Hillary Clinton may fancy she opposes the war in Iraq, but she has a funny way of showing it. On Monday night in Austin, she had this to say about what the United States military has done over the past five years:

"We have given them the gift of freedom, the greatest gift you can give someone. Now it is really up to them to determine whether they will take that gift."

There was nothing accidental about this line. She delivered it in response to two Iraq veterans introduced at a town hall meeting at the Austin Convention Center by her friend and campaign surrogate Ted Danson. She liked the line enough that she delivered it again a couple of hours later, at a campaign-closing rally at a basketball arena in south Austin.

"The gift of freedom" is, of course, a curious way to describe an unprovoked invasion and occupation causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and leaving just about every aspect of life chaotic and fraught with daily dangers. To then lay responsibility for the mess on the Iraqis -- we did our bit, now you do yours -- is the worst kind of dishonesty, a complete abdication of moral principles. It's the sort of thing George Bush has said to justify his decision both to launch the invasion in the first place and then stay the course -- a course Hillary Clinton has spent many months telling primary and caucus voters she thinks was misconceived from the start.

Why, then, is she taking on the president's rhetorical tropes? Could it be she didn't -- and doesn't -- oppose the Iraq war quite as much as she's been letting on?

George Orwell rightly warned us about the way politicians use words like "freedom" when such usage begs more questions than it answers. "Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way," he wrote in his famous essay Politics and the English Language. "That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different."

Clinton's audience certainly thought that what she was doing was standing four-square behind the veterans. That was they way they took it, and applauded her accordingly. Perhaps, though, before they make their choices tomorrow, the voters of Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont should reread her words and ask themselves what the hell she really meant.

Comments

[jsinclair]

So the Iraq war was a "gift of freedom" in her eyes? No wonder she never apologizes for her war authorization vote. No wonder she seems to feel no personal responsibility for the 4000 soldiers killed. Or the hundreds of thousands Iraqi civilians--men women and children--who have been killed or maimed in her war,

She's still proud of it--at least when pandering to a sympathetic crowd.

And she has the nerve to mock Obama for COURAGEOUSLY taking a public stand that could have ended his career in politics?

When has Hillary ever had her (in her words), "one big speech"? When, in the thousands of speeches she's given in the past 7 years in public office has she ever had HER "courageous" moment?

Supporters? Anyone? For all her bragging about herself, I can't think of a single time when Hillary's taken a courageous, principled and unpopular stand.

Not. One...

[peterg76]

No, no, the gift of freedom was for the Iraqi *oil*. The Iraqi *people* got the Coalition Provisional Authority, unemployment and Abu Ghraib.

[newshawk14]

I would recommend that everyone read Thomas E. Ricks book , "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure
in Iraq." There are a fair number of people, including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Bremer
that I would happily turn over to any country, that wanted to try them as war criminals.

[FogBelter]

Bush delivered the same "Gift of Freedom" to Iraq as McKinley did to the Philippines in 1898.


The Philippines has never been the same for it, so the Iraqis know what they have to look forward to.


It's hard to transmutate an act of Piracy to one of Grace.

[fourex]

If Hillary calls the Bush attack and occupation of Iraq democracy, please don't wake her when the phone rings, at any hour.

[desmirl]

Hilary's votes on the Iraq situation got a lot of people killed. She showed BAD JUDGMENT. i cannot understand how people could be proud of her BAD JUDGMENT!

[jsinclair]

So. True. I just can't understand why the press lets her successfully keep spinning "bad judgment" as "experience".

[YellerDawg]

First trip to the Huffpo Rodeo, cowboy?

[desmirl]

No, just being Mr. Obviousman, because the obvious needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and re........

[research]

The Iraqi Invasion and Occupation is a War Crime.

It's the "gift" that keeps on giving.

Iraq is not our country.

We are occupiers invaders meddlers.

We announce a date by which we will be gone.

We give money to the UN to take over all Iraq rebuilding funding.

We leave.

The Iraqis do what they want to with their country.

[transendentilist]

We have freed the Iraqis. It's just that we're no better than Saddam was. They had us forced upon them, and what we have done there is horrible, but you can't say we didn't free the Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam. And this is exactly what Hillary meant. I suspect you know this, but just want to do some more Hillary bashing.

[dotmafia]

Hillary Clinton is complicit and at the very least partly responsible for the deaths of close to one million people because of her vote to allow Bush to invade and occupy Iraq. Notwithstanding the injured and displaced in Iraq, which is most likely several million. What about the deaths of 600,000 Iraqi children during the Clinton presidency due to the harsh sanctions imposed? These are huge numbers of innocent civilian deaths, not terrorists.

I mean, that is quite a stark, clear-cut fact which only serves to show how Clinton's lack of correct judgement had/has massive negative ramifications for untold millions of people. This leads one to ask the extremely important question : What kind of judgement would she make where the lives of billions of people on the planet could be at stake? Would she risk the extinction of humanity on this planet because of another one of her "bad judgements"?

Also, not only did her lack of correct judgement result in the deaths of millions, but it emboldened the radical extremist groups, giving them thousands upon thousands of new recruits angry with the decision to invade and occupy Iraq, and created a new haven for them to operate where there was none before. Clinton's decision to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq also is the reason why so many American families are suffering financially, because hundreds of billions of dollars which could have been spent in America was spent or wasted in Iraq. None of these horribly massive negative results were supported or caused in any way by Barack Obama, but by Hillary Clinton. She did not even read the National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq's supposed WMD's before she cast her vote. Clinton, it seems, only voted to support Bush's war because it was the politically correct gamble to make so soon after 9/11. She gambled with her vote, but it was the Iraqi and American people who lost and are the real losers.

Again, does America want a president who is partly responsible for the deaths of close to a million innocent people, and who refuses -- REFUSES -- to apologize not only to the Iraqi people, but also to the American public?

I don't think so.

America deserves better than Hillary Clinton.

[NicoleAnonymous]

In that case I think half this country is responsible for all the Iraqis who have died also. If they hadn't voted for Bush he wouldn't have gone to war. Why is she more responsible than them?

[appleknocker]

She 's supposed to be a little smarter than half the population.

[apduncan1]

The blood is in their hands also...

[ElkoJohn]

`
bc she is one of 100 senators
who are elected to do what is best for our country
that separates her from one out of half the voting population.
.

[bumpersticker]

Attla the Hun gave the gift of elephants.

We're at best a Santa with a ittle blur trim on the suit who gives his gift, then moves into the best bedroom for 1, 2, 10, or 100 years. Just too damn bad about Blitzen and the IED.

The measure of the gift is inversly proportional to the indebtedness that attends it. Last I heard we were expecting 75% of oil revenues going to US and British companies.

[valleygent]

When are the Hillary surrogates going to just admit it? Hillary is a hawk, she supported the invasion, she supports the Bush policy and getting out of Iraq will never happen under her administration.
Very negligent stance given the target of the REAL enemy( the not captured Osama Bin Laden) was her adopted hometown...our beloved New York City.

[donaldw6]

If it walks like a duck, etc. ... Hillary has never really been against the war. She is determined to defend "American interests" in Iraq, and we all know what that means.

Look, folks. It's time we get it through our heads that Iraq will never be free until the U.S. leaves. The current "government" in Iraq is viewed throughout the country as illegitimate U.S. puppets, and there can be no cooperation and unity as long as we and Blackwater are standing over them finagling the oil deals. By all that is human and decent, we need to get out immediately, then step up to the responsibility of paying enormous reparations for the damage we've done. We've committed a serious war crime, not just by eliminating Saddam, who won't be missed, but by our continuing post-war occupation.

Hillary isn't stupid. She knows that everything I've said in the above paragraph is true, and it's not possible to misinterpret her remarks. Listen carefully, folks. The truth is out there.

[NicoleAnonymous]

This might be off-topic but did anyone see the video of the Americans in Iraq throwing the puppy off the cliff and laughing about it? I didn't watch the video but I was very upset about it. I almost wish those Americans would die for what they did to that puppy.

[cadawa]

Andrew,
Do you think Clinton "preselected " her audience, ala Bush?
I'm afraid as long as a handful of corporations maintain a stranglehold on the information we hear and see everyday, low information voters are going to continue to be a huge problem.
The MSM preaches the "freedom" doctine and sadly too many Americans find it more comfortable to believe it than to recognize that their own country is commiting horrendouis criminal acts everyday of the week.
I hope and pray they wake up before they become victims of the restriction of civil rights that goes hand in hand with 21st Century imperialsm.
A Clinton presidency will be a continuation of Bush's foreign policy with a few sops for the plebs.

[desmirl]

When Hilary says she opposes the war, all you have to do is ask her, "Then explain your vote to authorize force against Iraq, explain your votes for continued funding, and explain your vote for Kyl-Lieberman--which is a back door for Bush to invade Iran." Hilary is a CHICKENHAWK--every bit as bad as Bush or Cheney.

[NicoleAnonymous]

And if Obama had to vote he would have voted "present" which would mean nothing.

[desmirl]

Maybe, maybe not. But Hilary's votes helped get 4,000 Americans dead, 25,000+ wounded, and who knows how many thousand innocent Iraqi women and children killed. Hilary's votes mean something... The mean that people who don't need to die will die.