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.

Comments

[bsbgone]

The ONLY way a Republican has a chance to win the White House in '08 is if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee -- so, you can predict with 100% certainty that she will be nominated.

Democrats are such arseholes!!

[Crozier]

Ah ha !!!! The Corporatist Regime wants to assure itself that Hillary Rodham Clinton, Centrist DLC, will allow the gluttony of the Middle East spigot - oil, construction, weaponry, etc...to continue unabated.

Again, these individual elitists hegemonists want verbal assurances that allowing her to be the puppet POTUS will not stop their greed for wealth and power. She gave it.

They are not building fortresses in Iraq only to leave. The Military Industrial Complex needs more. Hillary said that she will provide it. There is no doubt about it. Bill's surrogate son charade with Poppa and Hillary's prostration before the regime's propaganda minister, Rupert Murdoch, promises them further.

I am a Canadian, and the only solution for true liberals in your nation is a long and protracted fight to regain power in the shell of the Democratic party now controlled by pseudo moderate conservatives, or expatriation if you feel that the neocons have won.

[OTR6686]

Oh, Frank! Why are you holding Hillary and the other Democrats to a higher standard than you are holding the Republicans? Your thinking, while you believe it is independent, is falling in line with constant Republican strategy: Attack the Democratic frontrunner, no matter who it is.
This drawing closer to the center by the Democratic candidates is an election strategy. We can never get a candidate who will agree with us completely; we have to choose, not based on what they say when they are tired, overstressed, and under pressure to draw to the center. We must look at the person for his/her history of voting. We know that as president, Hillary would be progressive and work on those programs that we liberals say we want. If you sit out this election, or vote for a Democrat who does not have a chance, you are just playing into Republican strategy. And with a Republican win, we will never get out of Iraq---or other wars based on paranoia. They have made it clear that they follow the interests that foster a war economy.

[JD-28]

What is getting left out of this argument is the fact that it was the bungling Bush Administration with it's poor planning, bad intelligence, willful ignorance and wishful thinking that got the U.S. military into this $9 billion a month unnecessary fiasco. They, in essence, broke it, and now we all own it. A massive pullout seems to me to leave the microphone open to anyone who wishes to step up and use it. That could very well mean someone who is a decided friend to terrorists and enemy to the U.S. Then again it may not mean that, but at this point I don't think we should take that chance. I think that a phased withdrawal looks to be the best course right now. The "surge" seems to be keeping the violence down for now in areas where the U.S. military is located, but it is, as it has been, a game of whack-a-mole. This is a problem that needs a political fix. Let's hope that we don't own this for any longer than we have to, and hopefully we'll learn from this massive blunder and not let it happen again.

[solid]

"Let's hope that we don't own this for any longer than we have to, and hopefully we'll learn from this massive blunder and not let it happen again."
==========­==========­==========­=========

The Military-I­ndustrial-­Congressio­nal-Comple­x will be unable to continue turning handsome profits with that attitude young man!

[daddysboy]

It has become painfully clear that Hillary Clinton has some sorefully pro-establishment leanings and isn't sharing everything with her would be voters, but does this even compare with the abuses of the "...horrif­ying, entirely and eternally discredited Republican party."? I agree that America may not have a chance to elect a woman president because the Democrat party will be too short-sided and squeamish to nominate her, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet.

[nippersdad]

An awful lot of people on this thread with advice for progressives seem to like to cite the Democrat (sic) Party. If you have jumped the fence, have the grace to cite the name of the Party correctly. It is part of the price of admission.

[noblejoanie]

Some "pundit" was opining the other day that Rove taking aim at Hillary means she's the one the Republicans expect to run against. Rove is a clever man, so first, I suspect he planted that idea because, second, I believe he'd like nothing better than to run a Fred or Rudy against Hillary.

[Praedor]

The "tactics" change that has brought such "wonder" to Al Anbar has nothing at all to do with the surge and everything with doing what the official policy was NOT. It took the local lower ranking officers in Al Anbar BEFORE the surge to figure things out: deal with the Iraqis and their leadership as they are, not as the Bush Admin wants them to be. Even more important than this was the moves by the local Sheik, all on his own, to bring all the Sunni insurgent groups in the area together and agree to fight the foreign terrorists and others that make up the hated Al Qaeda in Iraq. All they were doing was prioritizing their enemies and, properly, deciding that Al Qaeda in Iraq (those bastards from SAUDI ARABIA and N. AFRICA, NOT Iran) was the first priority. The local US military leaders saw reason and worked WITH this Sheik and his peeps. The surge came afterwards, and thus, has absolutely NOTHING to do with Al Anbar "progress".

Be that as it may, when Al Qaeda in Iraq is wiped away (enough) then the local Al Anbar militias can turn their eyes back onto the undesired OCCUPIERS (that would be the US troops). Right now there is a grace period but stick around too much longer and that grace granted by the local Sheik will start wafting away in the desert winds.

We simply do NOT belong in Iraq. We never ever had a right to be there in the first place. We are NOT an empire and we MUST NOT act as if we are. Iraq's oil does NOT belong to us. Their government is NOT ours to lord over. Their people are NOT clients of the US, they are independent and perfectly capable of running their lives and THEIR country as THEY see fit.

We broke all the China in the China closet and there is NO WAY to glue it all together again into nice form. Staying "until the job is done" is bullshit. There is no "job" to be done by us.

[sunshineejc]

Frank,

I feel the same way you do about Hillary's electability. At first I thought by her weight she would become the Democrat champion to trump the Republican conundrum. But, now I must confess I do not know what she is up to!

On the other hand OBama seems to be a straight shooter with more than adequate answers to his critics. I especially like his differentiation between good judgement trumps experience. This is a timely remark because good judgement has been very scarce on both sides of the isle. I also like his attack on the hypocritical religious right by saying "I do not see anything about tax cuts to the rich in my Bible!"

I predict Obama's star will rise as Hillary's star will fall!

[MadamDeFarge]

You've only half-quoted the Beast. The rest of her comment was "We can't ever let this happen again. We can't be fighting the last war - we have to be preparing to fight the new war." Just what did she mean by that? Hillary is as New World Order as the Bushes. Stop thinking Democrat vs Republican. They are owned by the same people at the top and are both evil - and you are buying into their game.

[beebeisme]

Is it beyond everyone to see that maybe Hillary is making a good point? Hillary is saying that our tactics are now working in Iraq, just years too late. She's chastising the Bush administration for fumbling the war from the start, and she is hailing the efforts of the troops and the recommendations of our generals. Most every military official knew that to win the war in Iraq there would have to be overwhelming military force from the beginning. However, Bush did not follow those recommendations, and sent in troops while the US military was still fighting in Afghanistan. As a result we now have two failed wars and our support abroad is looking bleak.

It seems that everything with Hillary is taken to a higher level because of who she is. What she is saying here can't mean that she supports the troops but she does not support the war because everyone wants her to be a flip-flopper. I'm not saying that she has a pristine record, but give her a break. She was saying that she supports the troops to an audience of vets. Since when has pandering to the troops become such a cause for shock and alarm? Everyone looks at everything Hillary does with such a fine-tooth comb. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't, of course I want to know what the person who could potentially be my president thinks about all of the issues. But saying that she is war mongering because she supports the tactics that are now being used (which should have been used from the beginning of the war) is a little extreme.

As for people saying they're not voting for Hillary now because of one comment, there is still a long primary and even longer election a waiting us. I'm sure the other candidates will do or say something that will make you even angrier.

[CyberCitizen]

If there's any progress in making a political settlement, there's progress. But if there's no progress in making a political settlement, there's no progress whatsoever. Surges are military activities; political progress are the result of diplomatic activities. If the military leaders are re-inventing themselves into forceful diplomats, that might work.

Surges in and of themselves are temporary peacekeeping activities where you separate the combatants and both sides still take an occasional potshot at you to let you know you ultimately don't belong there.

[josieb]

I'm voting for whichever Democrat gets the nomination and if that means Hillary, so be it. I'll vote for one of those Repug losers when pigs fly.

[solid]

I'll go along with you on the Repukes. However, if Hillary gets the nomination, I may just have to write you in for Prez. I just can't bring myself to vote for her.

[CyrusBeaucephus]

She will never bring the troops home, and she will say anything to get votes. How stupid do you have to be to vote for her? Well America on the whole is pretty fucking stupid. Bush almost had a majority of the vote before he was appointed to the presidency by Scalia

[Nancyann]

Hillary Clinton, The Queen of the panderers. She is so disingenuous that you can't believe ANYTHING she says or does. She flip flops on abortion, flag burning, Iraq War, health care policy, photo ops with Newt and Santorum, and using or not usng the nuclear option. The list goes on and on.She is a weathervane politician and polls should not be used to make policy. Remember all her brushes with the law when she was in the WH. She made False accusations against the civil service workers in the travel office causing them to go into bankrupsy paying lawyers to defend themselves, her supposed loss of the White Water papers that were under subpoened but turned up on a side table in the private quarters of the White House within 1 week after the staute of limitations against her indictment had run. Her backing a truck up to the WH at the end of Cinton's term and emtying out the furnishings and having to return over $350,000. worth that didn't belong to her. All to furnish her new 4 million dollar mansion in DC. She is not to be trusted and certainly should not be elected president.

[gullible]

I understand there is a body of American voters who believe that to be a successful president, all those 'negative' values associated with Hillary Clinton must be present in that person - and, then some.

[Nonamnesiac]

The real question is what are progressives going to do about it. And it's clear to me at least that progressives intend to vote for this hypocritical, limited thinking warmongerer with horrific judgment. Progressives appear to oppose third party voting as a waste of a vote. Progressives praise Kucinich but won't vote for him in any significant numbers. So Hillary is going to become the choice of progressives no matter how many young Americans she supports having killed and maimed. Progressives are so brainwashed they actually believe she is experienced and intelligent, even though she got the most important vote of her career wrong due to cynical political, careerist calculations despite the overwhelming intelligence AT THE TIME that Saddam had no WMDs and was an enemy of al Qaeda.

So progressives should stop whining. Progressives must, in huge numbers, let the Democrat leadership know they will boycott the election or vote third party rather than have Hillary rammed down their throats, even if it means Republicans win. Otherwise we're simply going to have a continuation of Bush foreign policy, with someone able to make it sound better for awhile while still more young Americans and Iraqi civilians are killed and maimed for nothing but her political calculations.