Kyl-Lieberman Postgame

Chris Bowers has a good roundup of the vote that, embarrassingly went 76-22 for the bad guys with Hillary Clinton on the dark side. Biden and Dodd were part of the slightly odd legislative coalition against the bill. Lugar and Hagel decided to, for once, actually try to cast a useful vote and came out against it. Obama didn't vote because he was on the campaign trail and it wasn't close, but his office released a statement:

Senator Obama clearly recognizes the serious threat posed by Iran. However, he does not agree with the President that the best way to counter that threat is to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq, and he does not think that now is the time for saber-rattling towards Iran. In fact, he thinks that our large troop presence in Iraq has served to strengthen Iran -- not weaken it. He believes that diplomacy and economic pressure, such as the divestment bill that he has proposed, is the right way to pressure the Iranian regime. Accordingly, he would have opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment had he been able to vote today.

The good news is that the language was substantially weakened before passage.

Comments

Webb was the voice of reason on the opposition side.
He's doing us a real service, in my opinion. What's Hillary's game here?

Nonetheless, I suppose what this vote says is that folks are still very much afraid to give even the appearance of being "soft on terror" or some such nonsense.

Posted by ProfD | September 27, 2007 8:43 AM

Obama didn't vote because he was on the campaign trail and it wasn't close, but his office released a statement

Press releases are nice.

Speeches against the bill on the floor of the Senate are better.

Votes against the bill are best.

If Obama wants to be President then Obama needs to LEAD!
.

Posted by Curt M | September 27, 2007 8:49 AM

Clinton's "game" is that she doesn't think that Bush's position regarding the Middle East is inherently wrong, just that he chose a bunch of fools to implement it. Clinton is a hawk on foreign policy - despite the fact that many Democratic voters seem to think she's somehow "anti-war".

Clinton sees US hegemony in the Middle East threatened by Iran and Syria - and she wants to take steps to slow or stop that threat. She might think that Bush is going to be wrongheaded about it, but she doesn't want to take any stances that might come back to haunt her when the next President wants take military action against Iran - especially if that next President happens to be her.

Posted by NonyNony | September 27, 2007 8:52 AM

Relative to US actions, the following comment was left on the Jerusalem Post web site on an article on John Bolton. Yet another slant on the mysterious episode in Syria 2 weeks ago.

21. US missiles destroyed the Syrian nuclear site, not Israeli bombs.
A well informed top rank Russian agent - Russia
09/27/2007 05:37

The Syrians know it so they didn't react; the Iranians got the message as well as the North Koreans; the Israelis agreed to take part in the farce and accepted "the blame" for political reasons (IDF, Olmert popularity are on the rise after the Lebanon fiasco); the Americans did what they had to do with minimal internal criticism.

Posted by SLC | September 27, 2007 8:58 AM

Attached is a link to an article with a claim by Iranian dissidents.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1189411498043&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Posted by SLC | September 27, 2007 9:07 AM

Will someone explain to me why anyone would think $100.00 barrel oil and stepped up Shia insurgency against the United States' supply lines in southern Iraq are good things?

Posted by Duncan Kinder | September 27, 2007 9:11 AM

Will someone explain to me why anyone would think $100.00 barrel oil and stepped up Shia insurgency against the United States' supply lines in southern Iraq are good things?

And of course, unless Congress votes the President unlimited power to bomb Iran, the above-specified events are inevitable, right, Duncan?

Posted by James Gary | September 27, 2007 9:52 AM

Nonynony,
How do you know what you think you know? You seem to leap from some votes that HRC has made to a fullblown recitation of what she actually, really, thinks, even though she does not ever say what you say she thinks. Are you talking with her? Has she told you things that she doesn't tell other people? You may accuse of having the policies that you ascribe to her, but your flat statements of her real motivations and positions are not analysis, but just accusations. If you were doing analysis, you would have to take into account all the contrary evidence.

Posted by Tom in Ma | September 27, 2007 10:04 AM

I don't think you need to have a personal, confidential conversation with HRC--or with other public figures with long public records--to reach conclusions about their political positions. And not just on specific policy issues, but their positions in a broad sense: where you locate them on the political map.

The relevant biographical question in the case of the Clintons--they seem to be joined at the hip politically; one notable aspect of HRC's campaign is that no one even thinks to ask her whether she would return to WJC's policies; this seems to be assumed, and she certainly has not distanced herself from his domestic or foreign policies in any specific way, except to say that they went too far left on healthcare--is whether it is possible to separate political calculation from sincere policy positions or genuine political identity. I'd say this is basically an irrelevant distinction when a public figure's political stances are so consistent over a long period.

HRC and WJC both were shaped decisively by the politics of the 1970s and 1980s. Their adult political narrative is that they were traumatized by the McGovern debacle in 1972 and understood that the Democrats needed to move right in order to compete and win. (This is not just a story told by their detractors.) They spent the next twenty years proving that they were not George McGovern and not Walter Mondale. A key element of this was sounding hawkish notes on foreign policy, although that was obviously not very important in the political toolbox of a southern governor like Bill Clinton. Nonetheless, WJC argued within the National Governors Association in the 1980s in support of cooperating with Reagan's Central America policies (Dukakis argued against). I won't go into more detail. HRC has the foreign-policy positions that virtually any senator from New York would have. But her Middle East hawkishness is perfectly consistent with her and WJC's previous history. I believe she perceives "toughness" and militarism as issues of political culture and identity politics (my terms), not simply ones of rational foreign-policy analysis, and these carry over from the cold war era to the post-9/11 era. I expect these elements in her political persona to reemerge strongly once the antiwar sentiment now abroad in the land ebbs. And, yes, I think liberal Democrats who are persuaded that she has become antiwar or anti-interventionist in any serious way are deluding themselves. Her politics, like WJC's, is still basically about proving she's not Mondale or McGovern.

Posted by Doug | September 27, 2007 11:58 AM

I basically agree with Doug. Clinton has shown that she is willing to step on and offer a real healthcare plan. But the general fuzziness about what a reduced commitment in Iraq actually means has allowed her to sound like she is in the same ballpark as Obama and Edwards when I doubt she is even in the same time zone.

Posted by mpowell | September 27, 2007 12:33 PM

Tom in MA -

I think Doug may be right, but I'm not going to even go so far as him. What I'm going to say is "look at her words and her actions." Her actions have been to consistently give the President more latitude in foreign affairs - especially in terms of dealing with the Middle East. She refuses to commit to a withdrawl of troops from Iraq and she voted for this stupid saber rattling amendment proposed by Lieberman.

If it walks like a hawk and quacks like a hawk, it is, in all likelihood, a hawk. She is not an anti-war candidate and she doesn't position herself as one. She's positioned herself as a war candidate, but a war candidate who IS SMARTER THAN THE CURRENT PRESIDENT and will not make the same blunders he has. She still hasn't repudiated her vote for the AUMF in Iraq - and in fact she's defended it on numerous occasions and has laid the blame solely on the Bush administration for the MISUSE of the authorization, and not the Senate's role in passing it in the first place.

Now, I'm not pointing a finger and screaming "j'accuse" at the woman by any stretch of the imagination - that's who she is and that's the type of President she will be. I suspect that a good chunk of her outlook on the office of the President probably does come from when she worked in her husband's administration and saw firsthand the effects of Congress tying a President's hands in the area of foreign policy.

And, truthfully, as far as American foreign policy is concerned her positions are not radical by any stretch of the imagination. There have only been two Presidents since WWII who have deviated from this model of foreign policy - Carter and W. Carter erred on the side of peace more than other Presidents did and had his butt handed to him. W jumped on this crap neocon theory of "pre-emptive war" and that has been even more disastrous for the country. The rest of them - from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Nixon to Reagan to Clinton - have all had a foreign policy outlook similar to what HRC's seems to be: maintain US hegemony in areas of interest to the US, primarily Europe, Asia and the Mid-East (they have all been almost uniformly indifferent to Africa).

But her own words and actions define her as not anti-war by any stretch of the imagination. She's in line to be more "reasonable" about using war as a diplomatic club than the current office-holder is, but few people seem like they'd be less reasonable, outside the GOP primary contenders at the moment, of course.

Posted by NonyNony | September 27, 2007 12:38 PM

From Think Progress:

UPDATE Before the vote today, changes were made to the original amendment, with paragraphs three and four taken out completely. This paragraph was also added at the end:

“Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated on September 16, 2007 that “I think that the administration believes at this point that continuing to try and deal with the Iranian threat, the Iranian challenge, through diplomatic and economic means is by the preferable approach. That the one we are using. We always say all options are on the table, but clearly, the diplomatic and economic approach is the one that we are pursuing.”

http://thinkprogress.org/

Posted by Pragmatic Liberal | September 27, 2007 12:57 PM

even though she does not ever say what you say she thinks.

Yes, she does, and has repeatedly, perhaps not in those precise words, but hegemony dressed up in pretty words is still hegemony. The only SUBSTANTIVE difference between her expressed views and Bush's is that she is a little more supportive of diplomacy that Bush at the margins. A little; there is certainly no evidence that she would be ready to make the sort of grand bargain with Iran that, unless we remove ourselves entirely from the Middle East (my preferred option, but not terribly likely), is the only way to avoid an apocalyptic war.

It's the people desperate to think that she is some kind of a dove who want to pretend that she doesn't really mean what she says.

Now, Hillary is what she is, and even gets some credit for honesty for being a straightforward hawk. But let's not pretend otherwise out of a desperate desire to regain the White House.

Posted by LarryM | September 27, 2007 1:23 PM

And of course, unless Congress votes the President unlimited power to bomb Iran, the above-specified events are inevitable, right, Duncan?

I don't know.

Maybe tomorrow the Iraqis will start handing out flowers to the troops.

Anything is possible.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | September 27, 2007 1:41 PM

I think everyone else has said it: Hillary is a hawk. Nobody should think for a minute she isn't; it's perfectly clear that she thought the Iraq War was a great idea-- even in 2006!-- and has only sounded notes about a withdrawal because she has to in order to win the Democratic nomination.

I should note that while I am sure the 1972 McGovern experience has something to do with this, I don't think it is necessary to delve into motives. The fact is, Hillary and Bill Clinton, in 30 years in politics, have supported every single war or bellicose action engaged in or proposed by the United States government or hawkish elements in the Congress. I assume this is because they believe in a policy of US imperialism, just as Bush and Cheney do. I see no reason to assume they are cynics who kill American soldiers because they don't want to be perceived as weak-- the end result is the same anyway.

Posted by Dilan Esper | September 27, 2007 3:11 PM

LarryM -

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you too, because you're going too far in the other direction when you say this:

The only SUBSTANTIVE difference between her expressed views and Bush's is that she is a little more supportive of diplomacy that Bush at the margins.

I don't think this is a fair claim to make either. My read on Clinton is that she's very much a "status quo" person - her foreign policy resembles that of Bush I, Bill Clinton, Nixon, LBJ, and even Reagan once you eliminate Reagan's rhetoric and look at his actual policy. Those policies are specifically geared towards PRESERVING American hegemony in the Mid-East, Asia, and Europe.

Bush The Lesser, on the other hand, has had a radically different approach to foreign policy from his predecessors. His approach has been to attempt to EXPAND American hegemony through overt military force, rather than through diplomacy and covert action. This is a radically different approach to foreign policy than what had gone before, and my read on Clinton is that she is less an expansionist than she is out to get things back to a stable status quo - but she'd be unwilling to leave things such that the US influence on the Middle East is reduced to something less than it was before Bush decided to start his expansionist efforts.

Ironically for the proponents of US hegemony, Bush the proponent of expanded US hegemony has been disastrous and expanding it. The US has lost a TON of influence in both Europe and Asia because of our focus on military expansion into the Mid East. While we've been pissing away goodwill, blood and money into disastrous attempts to conquer the Mid East by military might, Europe has reached a point where they can get along perfectly well without us, thank you very much, the Russian bear has (thanks to higher oil prices) reawakened and decided that its time to re-exert influence on its neighbors, and China has expanded its influence both in its own part of the world AND in Africa. In every single way, Bush is leaving the US hegemony weaker than it was before he came into office.

Posted by NonyNony | September 27, 2007 3:14 PM

Nony,

A thoughtful response. But IMO wrong, ultimately. Here's why:

One can construct a counter factual about what would have happened if someone less radical than Bush were the president on and after 9/11. While ultimately the answer is unknowable, let us assume for the sake of argument that a more "conservative" approach would have been taken, in the sense of preserving American power in the middle east rather than expanding it. Part of that approach, let us assume, would have been to stay out of Iraq. If that were the case, then I agree that Hillary Clinton would probably maintain that more status quo approach.

But what I don't think most people realize is the extent to which the national greatness conservatives and their fellow travelers have already, irrevocably reached their goal. No, I'm not saying that Iraq has gone exactly as they have wanted. But they HAVE (intentionally) taken us to a place where we CAN'T simply, as you say, "get things back to a stable status quo." That's one of the reasons why the foreign policy establishment, including the realists, have continued to basically back Bush and his policies. They know that, like it or not, the apple cart in the middle east can't be set back up.

The horrifying truth is that, given the developments of the past six years, we really are in a position where, if one is "unwilling to leave things such that the US influence on the Middle East is reduced to something less than it was before Bush ...," the logic of conflict with Iran is, indeed, horribly compelling.

Parenthetically, I think that it would almost certainly be a disaster even on those terms. But for people committed to maintaining the power of the United States in the middle east, one could easily conclude that, as risky as it would be, and ignoring or rationalizing the moral dimension, that our only hope of maintaining our position in the middle east at this point is conflict with Iran.

Now my answer to this, of course, it to get the hell out of the middle east. I realize that isn't exactly a popular position. As I suggested up thread, there MIGHT be another option - a grand bargain with Iran - but, given what compromises we would need to make (and we would almost certainly end up relatively weaker in the middle east than we were in 2000), such an option has little real support, and certainly none from Clinton.

Ultimately I guess what I'm saying is that the distinction that you draw, while plausible, is irrelevant given the current facts on the ground. You can't un-ring the bell.

Posted by LarryM | September 27, 2007 4:04 PM

"Senator Obama clearly recognizes the serious threat posed by Iran."

In other words, Obama is equally a hawk on Iran. He just doesn't want to start bombing until he's in office.

If he thinks sanctions and economic pressure is going to stop Iran from developing nuclear energy that they clearly need, he's also an ignoramus.

It has been established that Bush does not NEED any more "authorization from Congress" to attack Iran. The Dems HAD that opportunity back in the spring and they blew it. Bush now KNOWS he can attack Iran without Congressional authorization and he KNOWS the Democrats will not only lie down under it, they will SUPPORT it - as Obama and Clinton have clearly shown. All Bush needs is a semi-plausible "casus belli".

He doesn't even need the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program anymore. All he needs is some border incident with Iran which he can use to bolster his case that "Iran is killing US troops in Iraq."

It's a done deal - and you suckers are still debating it.

I sent Matt a statement by Daniel Ellsberg last night wherein Ellsberg basically says it's all over: a coup has occurred in the US. Bush will attack Iran, then he will use the national security state laws passed over the last six years to smash dissent. Ellsberg even believes there will be "detention camps" for dissenters. He's convinced, as I am, that the war in Iran is a done deal. And that nobody can stop it now.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 27, 2007 5:37 PM

David Bromwich tags Hillary correctly over at HuffPo:

Hillary Clinton Votes for War Again
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/hillary-clinton-votes-for_b_66174.html

Money Quote:

"The original draft of Kyl-Lieberman had asked U.S. forces to "combat, contain, and roll back" the Iranian menace within Iraq. But the words "roll back" were all too plainly a coded endorsement of hot pursuit into Iran; and the senators did not want to go quite so far. To assure a larger majority the language was accordingly trimmed and blurred to say "that it should be the policy of the United States to stop inside Iraq the violent activities and destabilizing influence of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies."

The inclusion of Hezbollah deserves some notice. It is part of a larger attempt, already apparent in the Lebanon war of 2006, to manufacture an "amalgam" of all the enemies of Israel and the United States throughout the region, and to treat them all as one enemy. Those who believe in the amalgam will come to agree that many more wars by the United States and Israel are needed to crush this enemy.

More provocative is a secondary detail of the amendment, which received less notice from the mainstream media. Kyl-Lieberman approves the listing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard of Iran as a "foreign terrorist organization." Now, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard is the largest branch of the Iranian military. By granting Vice President Cheney's wish (a distant dream in 2005) to put the Iranian guard on the U.S. terrorist list, the Senate has classified the army of Iran as an army of terrorists. The president, therefore, as he follows out the Cheney plan has all the support he requires for asserting in his next speech to an army or veterans group that Iran is a nation of terrorists.

It was said during the Vietnam War that "a dead Vietnamese is a Viet Cong." It will assuage the conscience for U.S. bombers of Iran to know that a dead Iranian is a terrorist. The Senate, by this classification, has absolved the bombers in advance. "

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 27, 2007 11:37 PM

David Mizner at HuffPo makes a clear distinction between Edwards positions on Iraq and Iran and Clinton's:

Hillary Hates You
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-mizner/hillary-hates-you_b_66204.html

Money quote:

"But Hillary's prowar vote on Thursday opened the door for Edwards and that night, at the debate in New Hampshire, he surged through.

[Edwards Begin] I voted for this war in Iraq, and I was wrong to vote for this war. And I accept responsibility for that. Senator Clinton also voted for this war.

We learned a very different lesson from that. I have no intention of giving George Bush the authority to take the first step on a road to war with Iran.

And I think that vote today, which Senator Biden and Senator Dodd voted against, and they were correct to vote against it, is a clear indication of the approach that all of us would take with the situation in Iran because what I learned in my vote on Iraq was you cannot give this president the authority and you can't even give him the first step in that authority because he cannot be trusted."

[Edwards End]

...Unlike Clinton, he opposes the very concept of a global war against terrorism. And unlike Clinton, he backed the Webb Amendment, which would have made it a crime for Bush to attack Iran without Congressional authorization--a position that won Edwards no friends at AIPAC, which killed a similar measure in the House."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 27, 2007 11:45 PM