I think it's a little depressing on several levels that it requires a long and brilliant article to make the point, but as Michael Crowley notes in a long and brilliant article on the subject the reason Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq authorizing resolution appears to be that she thought it was the right thing to do; it appears that she won't apologize for it because she doesn't think she was wrong; and, last, it appears that her views on both these things are connected to a larger worldview that's more militaristic than your average liberal's.
I say it's depressing because it winds up simultaneously being unfair to her opponents. She's so stuck with the "calculating" tag that even in the face of all the evidence, Clinton's views on Iraq get read exclusively through the lense of political calculation (like any pol, of course, she does in fact do some calculating) without any consideration of the possibility that there are real views her. Conversely, her opponents deserve a chance at a real debate over what kind of foreign policy the voters want, and not one in which we pretend that everyone agrees and this is all just a game of gotcha and who said what when.
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Heads in the Sand
True. But you're missing the more important point: her views on Iran. Whatever she thought of Iraq is now in the past, by concentrating on overanalyzing that, we're missing that she and all these candidates have a position on Iran that is practically identical to that of Bush on Iran and on Iraq.
It's an election cycle (perpetual, now), and all these candidates will jump through hoops to adopt the policy that AIPAC sends them. Unless enough of us speak out in every forum possible to make it clear that we think that these candidate's policy should reflect what we think, and not that of AIPAC, it will continue to reflect Aipac's policy, and all of our nuancing, overanalyzing of their arguments and gotcha games will be entirely useless.
Let's remember, all these candidates were competing like show ponies at the AIPAC conference to outdo one another in who likes AIPAC more. Now go to AIPAC's website and check out what their position is on Iraq, Iran, and everything else.
That's what we REALLY need to be talking about.
Posted by Adam | March 26, 2007 1:59 AM