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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
.
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.
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.
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.
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.