Hillary's War
Hillary Clinton addressed a group of veterans in Kansas City yesterday and proclaimed that "we've begun to change tactics in Iraq," and those changed tactics are "working." "We're just years too late in our tactics," she lamented.
(Note: The first report I read, on Huffington Post and from the New York Post, quoted Hillary as saying "the surge" is working. Now that I have seen the full speech, I can quote her exactly. "We've begun to change tactics" . . . But what else is she talking about except George W. Bush's Hail Mary surge? What other "new tactics" have we begun to try? The surge is the story. She was, of course, talking about the surge. Arguing about how she characterized it misses the essential and crucial point. It obfuscates, as in Karl Obfuscate Rove, which is exactly what every Republican argument is meant to do.)
What does Hillary mean by "working"? How is the surge working? What is it accomplishing? What is it meant to accomplish? What, in the war gospel according to Hillary, is the goal of the surge? Is it the same goal she had in mind when she voted to allow Bush to go to war in Iraq if he wanted to? Is her only regret now that our "tactics" were flawed, i. e., we did not send enough Americans to accomplish whatever the Bush/Clinton goal is right from start?
I suspect all she meant to do in Kansas City yesterday was pander a little to the Vets, be enough of the Hillary they want to get some of their votes, you know. But her declaration that the surge is "working" and that we're just "years too late in our tactics" goes beyond standard politician-pander to reveal something terribly wrong in her thinking. She has given us a glimpse beneath the mask -- there's the real Hillary. Years too late in our tactics? How many more Americans and Iraqis should have died under her leadership, with her superior tactics, to achieve her unspecified goal ("victory"?)? Does she think the American people have turned against this unwinnable, unconstitutional, criminal war only because Bush didn't surge from the beginning?
I have been thinking I would feel compelled to vote for Hillary if the Democrats nominated her because that would be the only meaningful way to cast a vote against the horrifying, entirely and eternally discredited Republican party.
I'm not sure now how meaningful that vote would really be. And I don't think I'm going to be able to do it.
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Hey, Frank,
I heard Senator Clinton's comment and nearly fell off the couch. I was hoping I'd mis-understood her, but here it is in black and white. Do you think maybe her Secret Service detail needs to ramp up its notions of candidate security? It sounds as though someone slipped McCain Kool-Aid in Hillary's water bottle.
Gramma Rose
there is no other way to say this, than to just say it - if Hillary is the nominee come election time, it will most probably be the first time that i choose not to vote.
it will have nothing to do with her being a woman, i do not care what anyone is except presidential material, which she is not.
and i hope, that all the woman who think it is time for a woman to be president, do not vote for her, solely for that reason. because if she is elected, it may be another 200 years before another woman gets a chance at it.
she is just bad at what she does, panders to anyone who will support her, never says anything that is not pre-scripted and analyzed from poll results, is way to secretive, and she has made some very bad decisions in the past.
WOW, then you don't understand where we are in the US now. I would vote for any democratic candidate, and it would be HUGELY STUPID not to vote for Hillary. I know you have this monstrous view of her but all the other candidates watch the polls all the other candidates play the same game,(and it would be stupid not to). But she is the one who is better at it. That's a good thing, unless you want to lose.
If you really won't vote for her, then you probably deserve the conservative president we might get.
This is the first time I'm actually getting involved in a campaign and that's because of Hillary. If you are saying you will not vote for her, I will try to get 10 other people to vote for her. She is strong, and she can win, she is NOT bush-lite (you have to be blind to say this) and she also does not deliver low-blows which some other democratic candidates have.
The woman is a Nixonian Republican during a time when we need an FDR Democrat. Follow the money, tell me she is not financed by the same group which financed George Bush. Tell me that those she has surrounded herself with are not the same group which gave us NAFTA and GATT. Tell me that she will not follow the same game plan written by Bush and his cronies in Iraq.
I don't care to trade a conservative Republican for an ultra conservative Democrat when I have the choice to vote for someone who represents me. We are talking about the PRIMARIES here, not the general election. Don't lecture us about what we want to see in a candidate. You sound like Rush Limbaugh.
Hillary has said in the past that she regrets giving Bush the authorization to use force because he bungled the mission so badly. If SHE had been president, she would have done it right.
Barack Obama was wrong about her. She's not Bush-Cheney Lite. She's Bush-Cheney Redux.
I really want to support Hillary but she makes it so hard. When are these presidential hopefuls going to realize that they can't keep straddling the fence and pandering to whatever group they are talking to? All they are doing is just giving the Karl Rove's of this world more ammunition. It is time they remember what party they represent and represent us!
She doesn't care what you think. She believes (and probably correctly) that bottom line you'll vote for her as the lesser of the evils. She has no reason to cater to so-called progressives because she knows she can take you for granted. That is why so-called progressives are as culpable for the killing and maiming of our young and innocent Iraqis as George Bush and Hillary Clinton.
I do not say this to be disrespectful, as I do believe in being civil and respectful. But I don't believe that anyone who is truly progressive can vote for anyone other than Kucinich in the primaries or ever vote for any of the three warmongering Democratic frontrunners in the general election. They are murderers and those who vote for them are voting to empower them to continue murdering innocent people, making them complicit in continuing the murder.
As a progressive on the left I want us out of Iraq NOW and I want the Bush/Cheney group to all be impeached.
I also think that both Obama and Hillary are correct in saying we cannot abruptly leave, de-stabilizing the region. We need to proceed with caution. Poorly thought out decisions, and incompetant execution or a plan (or no plan at all) by the Bush administration have made this mess in Iraq.
Hillary is smart, practical, and competant. She is a thinker and a problem solver, not prone to wild excesses. In my view, she is exactly what we need.
Further, I will vote for whoever is the Democratic nominee, and believe you should too. We simply cannot have, Guiliani, Thompson, or the likes as our next President. (Guiliani has just said he likes the idea of Privatization of Social Security, and it is written on HuffPo that hespent more time at Yankees games than he did at ground zero after 9/11).
THANK YOU SO MUCH for this article!
I feel like hillary is being handed the nomination on a silver platter. I also feel she is leading us over a cliff. It's already like if you talk bad about hillary, you are talking bad about the Democratic party. I always stood by the clintons during the bj and the other drama. but her vote for and support of this war makes me sick-just physically ill. I will not vote for her EVER. and do you really think any of the other candidates are going to pull ahead of her and get the nomination? of course anything is possible but I doubt it. the best chance we have is AL GORE! I am praying that he will get into the race.
Hillary would be both dangerous and popular at the same time, just like her husband. She will make tough decisions only after she takes a poll to see which way the wind is blowing. Nobody really knows her but Hillary..
Look at Hillary Clinton's own words, because I think the comment she made about making progress in Al Anbar Province is not the most important. Look at the last sentence of the following quote from her speech...
“We’ve begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar Province, it’s working,” said Mrs. Clinton, the New York Democrat and candidate for her party’s presidential nomination. “We’re just years too late changing our tactics. We can’t ever let that happen again. We can’t be fighting the last war; we have to be preparing to fight the new war..."
What the heck does she mean by "preparing to fight the new war." This is why I will support Kucinich -- I voted for him in the primary of 2004, and I'll do it again. He is the only one running who voted against this war every single time there was a vote to make, who got it right in the first place, who has it right on health care, who is not beholden to the usual corporate "players," or should I say, "payers."
Hillary Clinton is MOTS (more of the same) and cannot be anything else.
Democrats beware. If we want to see a change in how we are governed, it will do us no good to commit ourselves to "not" voting for a given candidate. Whoever becomes the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, we should back him/her and not throw a vote away to a third party candidate. That would tend to swing the pendulum to the right and elect a Republican President. The same holds true to Democratic candidates for other offices. We have to stick together and not be splintered by criticism of any of the Democratic candidates. None of them are perfect, but any of them is better than what the other side has to offer and what they stand for. Don't be fooled by their back pedaling and challenging Bush on some issues. They backed him 100% for almost 6 years and their opposition at the present time is nothing but a snow job to try and make themselves look like something they are not. If they are re-elected, their colors will change to the original.
Hillary is not a peace candidate. We need to focus on "preparing for new wars" ? Why the pre-supposition that we'll need to keep fighting wars?
The only way to bring the troops home AND bypass Hillary is a vote for Ron Paul. No one has said it more clearly than he did: "Just come home". It's not a matter of the surge working or not -- we shouldn't be there in the first place.
I give kudos to Ron Paul on his call for an end to imperialism and for getting out of Iraq. And a little bit for his stance on civil liberties.
Other than that, he's just a cranky old libertarian. I would consider Ron Paul over Hillary, but not over any of the other Dem candidates.
Probably correct in the sense that not enough troops were allowed by Rumsfeld to begin with.
It would have been the right thing to do, if you were going to do the wrong by invading Iraq.
Unfortunately, now, too little, too late for something that was entirely foolish when we should have been solely concentrating on Afghanistan and Pakistan (Bush, and probably his Democratic successor will never go after Pakistan -- they are a nuclear power, while Afghanistan and Iraq or not -- easier to pick on).
What does Hillary mean by her statements?
I let the rest of you try to psycho-analyze her.
NMJ (not my job).
I think it was clear to some that Hillary meant the surge had shown some success in areas like al Anbar in creating more security and reducing the violence. She was careless in her use of terminology. She never should have claimed the change in tactics was working. Instead she should have been more careful and said, "The surge seemed to be temporarily working in some areas...". We all know that once US forces leave, the violence will probably begin again even if not immediately and whatever successes the military produces are only temporary at best and very limited at best without a political solution which is not possible under the occupation. Even where the surge has shown some progress, this has come at the expense of arming Sunnis and other hostile groups who might use these arms against Shiites and/or the US in the future.
We need to be clear too that Hillary will act more like a hawk in front of military groups where these comments were delivered.
RJ Crane, Editor
topplebush.com
Sounds just like her husband Bill... Tell everyone what they want to hear even if you contradict yourself when pandering to the next group. Hillary's record on the war in Iraq is unacceptable.
As long as USA favors Israel and Arab dictators it doesn't matter if it's a democrat or a republican in the White House.
Is it really so strange that for instance Iranians dislikes/hates USA considering your history in that country, your support of Iraq's poison gas attacks on their people, your shooting down a commercial airplane and then rewarding the trigger-happy captain when he returned home etc.
For you Edwardianphiles...Granted, JE is a successful trial lawyer, but what political accomplishments--compared to Obama--can he hang is hat on? Yea, he's an ok talker as he should be, then what? How do you prop yourself as the poor man's candidate, then get $400 trims, and build a 28,000 sq ft palace; aren't there some inherent and troubling incongruencies between his words and actions?
Kucininch has some idealistic ideas, but really, his chances of winning the promary are about as good as the little gecko of GEICO fame. Same for the other stage decorators.
For my money, and our country's sake, I'll go with a person who had the testosterone to exercise sound prescience in the face of a 70% pro-Iraq-war-majority-winds. More importantly, his bold predictions of the outcomes were spot-on. Further, he walked with an unpopular group of protesters...where was Hillary/Edwards?
Look, when you hire a new employee, you never know for sure how they'll perform in a new, more responsible position. All we have to go by is past performance as a prognosticator of future...Deed for deed, this is a Duh call. Do you homework people...And please, don't let melanin taint your common-sense. When you're drowning, you simply want the strongest arm pulling you up...
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