Bad Answers

This Daily News article on Hillary Clinton's hawkish advisors doesn't advance the ball very far, but it's good to see the issue bubbling into less-elite circles. It's also noteworthy for the fact that Lee Feinstein, the top foreign policy guy on the campaign staff and thus presumably in job for a second-tier nationals security post, has a very silly response to these complaints:

"A lot of Obama's advisers thought this was a stupid war in 2002, and a lot of Hillary's advisers thought it was a good idea in 2002," said one Democrat with a national security résumé. "That's the original sin which causes people to make some choices."

"The campaign's advisers reflect a broad spectrum of opinion within the Democratic Party," countered Clinton national security guru Lee Feinstein. "The candidate makes her own decisions about her foreign policy positions."

Uh huh. Of course she makes her own decisions. But that's the point -- she decided that invading Iraq was a good idea, and her team is mostly made up of people who agreed with her. The concern isn't that Dick Holbrooke and Feinstein are controlling her mind. The concern is that she's working with the people she's working with because their thinking reflects her own thinking. And advisors are worth taking a look at, because "experts" tend to lay their ideas out in the press in more detail than do politicians. Clinton, for example, just hasn't clearly said one way or another whether or not she believes unilateral preventive war is a good basis for non-proliferation policy. But she did authorize the use of force against Iraq, and several of the people working for her on a high level have taken clearer stands in favor of preventive war, so it's natural to refer to them in raising the issue.

Simply noting in response that Clinton makes her own decisions (of course she does!) doesn't dispel one's doubts that she's not being clear about these issues because her beliefs on these matters aren't things Democratic primary voters will agree with.

Comments

Re Matthew's comment "noting in response that Clinton makes her own decisions (of course she does!) "
------------
ha ha ha. Nice sense of humor, Matthew. A dazzling display of knife-edged sarcasm.

Posted by Don Williams | November 29, 2007 11:30 AM

Simply noting in response that Clinton makes her own decisions (of course she does!) doesn't dispel one's doubts

Also, her decisions are going to be cabined by the advisers she chooses. It's not as if she's going to be out there, doing original research. She'd be the President, for gawd's sake.

As I recall, Cheney's power came in part from his ability to control the people who were let in to advise the President. And I think this--the gatekeeper to Presidential attention function--is almost always reported to be the single greatest source of power for Administration apparatchicks. So her choice of advisors, and the sorts of arguments that those advisors find credible, matters a lot.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 29, 2007 12:03 PM

OT, but somebody somewhere has to say something about Israel's Prime Minister Olmert's comparison between Israel and Apartheid South Africa.

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.

Not to argue that Olmert is right. Not to ask why, given that Olmert openly feels this way, Abbas should make any concessions at all, much less concede that Palestinians do not have a right to return.

My only question is: Has Olmert been dumber than Bush all along?

Posted by Arnold Evans | November 29, 2007 12:04 PM

Clinton was certainly wrong on Iraq, and won't admit it. And she's also clearly tried to portray herself as 'serious' in foreign policy by making vaguely more-hawkish noises than her rivals on most foreign policy questions. But do you really think there's a genuine danger President Hillary Clinton would launch unilateral preventive war against Iran? After seeing what a mess Iraq has been? Knowing the strength of opposition in her own party? Remembering how Republicans pilloried her husband over Kosovo, Somalia, etc.? The stereotype of Clinton among her progressive critics is 'cautious' and 'calculating'. I think it's basically accurate. But it makes it hard to imagine her being so stupidly reckless as to puruse the kinds of policies you seem to fear, Matt.

'Clinton: Unlikely to act crazily' is not a ringing endorsement, I realize. And admittedly the likelihood of crazy foreign policy from Obama is probably less (not sure about Edwards). But I guess I'm suggesting the likelihood gap is pretty small.

Posted by Ryan | November 29, 2007 12:31 PM

). But I guess I'm suggesting the likelihood gap is pretty small.

You could have said the same, with more force, about Bush absent 9/11. Something unexpected will come up. Maybe it'll relate to Iran, maybe it won't.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 29, 2007 12:37 PM

Yeah I'm with Ryan on this. It's just hard for me to believe President Hillary would endanger her re-election in 2012 by invading Iran or Syria or whatever else it is Matt is afraid of. She would have to be batshit insane to do that after how Iraq has gone (and we'll still be in Iraq when she takes office which will severely limit her ability to preventively invade any other country anyway). Which she is clearly not, however much many of us disagree with her support for invading Iraq in '03.

I'm much more concerned that she'll be overly cautious on domestic issues such as health care and global warming than I am that she wants to invade a lot of Muslim countries, but I have many similar doubts about the other major candidates especially Obama.

Posted by Ron | November 29, 2007 1:00 PM

You could have said the same, with more force, about Bush absent 9/11. Something unexpected will come up. Maybe it'll relate to Iran, maybe it won't.

Well, I think the difference is that Bush's mind has been revealed to have been basically an empty vessel, easily filled with crazy notions by crazy advisors in a moment of crisis. That's not the case with Clinton. As Matt concedes, she does have a pretty coherent set of views of her own. They comprise some hawkish instincts but also (I'm suggesting) some cautious, risk-averse ones.

Not to say her hawkish side doesn't carry some risks, certainly worth factoring in by those of us picking a nominee. But they still strike me as pretty small.

Posted by Ryan | November 29, 2007 1:11 PM

Clinton's risk-aversion didn't prevent her from authorizing Bush to invade Iraq.

In fact, part of the criticism of Clinton and her cadre of advisors is that they constantly view the "hawkish" option as the less risky option.
In the run up to the war, you heared a lot about how - in a post 9/11 world - we couldn't live with the risk of Saddam with WMD. The assumption was made my Ken Pollack et. al. that going to war was the less risky option.

Furthermore, Clinton's reflexive triangulation tends to make view "moving right" on any issue as the less politicaly risky option, even after public opinion turned heavily against the war.

So both her substantive and political risk-aversion tend to drive her hawkishness rather than counter it.

Posted by WillieStyle | November 29, 2007 2:17 PM

Yup, political risk-aversion can certainly cut both ways. Certainly when the President is on the bully pulpit and the barnstorm circuit demanding the authority to overthrow a dictator, political risk-aversion for a Senator may well produce an instinct to 'let him have what he wants' (and undoubtedly did in Clinton's case).

But when *you're* the President, and you *own* the bully pulpit, you get to set the terms of the debate to a much greater extent. You're not subject to the same political pressures to "move right", as you put it. Your freedom of movement is greater.

Which takes us back to her substantive views. Yes, they shade toward hawkishness on the campaign trail. But I'm with Matt that it's very hard to predict how this would play out in practice. Ken Pollack's is not the sum total of the advice she'd be getting, and the supposed 'lessons of 9/11' are not the only ones she's absorbed in her lifetime.

It's possible I'm being excessively optimistic on this score, but the spectre of unilateral preemptive war with Iran under a Clinton presidency, which Matt raises, strikes me as a boogeyman. Whatever else may be wrong with her, she's not that politically stupid or reckless.

Posted by Ryan | November 29, 2007 3:35 PM

"Unilateral preventive war"? Saints preserve us. There was nothing unilateral or preventive about the invasion of Iraq. How can you have a preventive war that had been going on for twelve years before the invasion? And if it was unilateral, what were Britain, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Holland, Denmark, and all the other democracies doing supporting it?

If you want to have a serious analysis of what Clinton might do, it would help to start from a reasonably accurate depiction of what she's already done. No one in their right mind is advocating starting a war with Iran, and people who can't tell the difference between Iran and Iraq should be reading history instead of posting about it.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 29, 2007 4:52 PM

"Unilateral preventive war"? Saints preserve us.

Saints preserve us!

My goodness gracious!

Heavens to betsy!

Gee golli willikers!

* * *

The last four years have been very interesting.

I'd previously often looked at, say, Germany, and been amazed there were still people who thought Hitler had been on the right track. It indicates there's literally no catastrophe leaders can create for their country that won't retain some support somewhere. Likewise, in Iraq, you still have people pining for Saddam.

So I'd then wonder: who are these people in the United States? One of them, we've learned, is named Robert Powell. You can be certain he would still be celebrating the invasion of Iraq even if it had ended with most Americans in rags, pushing their possessions in wheelbarrows though the bombed out streets.

Posted by 654321 | November 29, 2007 5:14 PM

"But do you really think there's a genuine danger President Hillary Clinton would launch unilateral preventive war against Iran?"

Yes.

Without a doubt.

Give me one reason to believe she won't other than your personal impressions which are anecdotal, i.e., worthless.

Here's the reality. Clinton (and Obama) both believe IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY EVIDENCE that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Nothing Iran or the IAEA has done has indicated to them that this is not the case.

Exactly what, then, does Iran have to do to satisfy Clinton that they are NOT building nukes?

Answer: Nothing that exists in reality, obviously.

Therefore, Clinton will run through her "diplomacy" moves. Will any of those include a security guarantee that the US will not under any circumstances attack Iran as long as Iran does not make nuclear weapons or attack the US or Israel?

Email me when this happens. Because if she does, the Israel Lobby will crucify her. Because regime change IS the sine qua non of US policy vis-a-vis Iran - and not just her policy, but the policy of virtually everybody who really runs this country, including the oil companies, the war profiteers, and the Israel Lobby - including all the people who fund her political campaign.

In addition to which, Iran can not suspend enrichment and have a nuclear ENERGY program unless the world agrees - as it should under the NPT Charter - to HELP Iran do so in a manner that respects Iran's sovereign rights and enables Iran to consider that it will not find itself cut off from nuclear fuel sources in the event of political changes in another country. No sovereign country would agree to that.

Therefore, in the end, Clinton's "diplomacy" can and must go nowhere.

What's left?

Bomb Iran.

There is no other outcome to the situation given the reality of US foreign policy.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 29, 2007 5:39 PM

"she decided that invading Iraq was a good idea"

Is there any evidence for this claim? Her having said at the time of the AUMF that invading was a bad option based on the available evidence and having said after the invasion that it had set a bad precedent make this look like a lie to me.

Posted by rilkefan | November 29, 2007 8:43 PM

I'm in about the same place as Jamie Rubin on Iraq. Currently, it's a catastrophe, like all wars. It would be a double shame if we didn't take the opportunity to learn the appropriate lessons. If all we see here is an "illegal war of aggression based on lies", we'll miss the point. Sure, that's both the easy and the fashionable view. But it's demonstrably wrong.

Hillary Clinton, like everybody else in 2002, was aware of the context and made a decision based on it. A lot of that, and most analysis above high school/CNN level, gets lost if this is depicted as just another partisan Punch and Judy Show. If this was the real history, all we would ever have to do about foreign affairs is avoid electing George W. Bush. Seems inadequate as a policy.

Posted by Robert Powell | November 30, 2007 7:12 AM

Going to war with Iran is not going to be an easy decision for whoever gets to sit in the Oval Office in 2009. A lot of nonsense is being spread like manure about what Hillary will do given her "thin" fp credentials. Don't see much heft in Obama's or John's either. Matt has a lot of time on his hands so that he can muse about Hillary doing this and that or he has access to some nefarious plan to which others are not privy. One has to wonder that given the number of daily posts whether Matt really has time to think through his stuff.

Posted by Alan | November 30, 2007 9:29 AM

"Uh huh. Of course she makes her own decisions. But that's the point -- she decided that invading Iraq was a good idea, and her team is mostly made up of people who agreed with her."

I recall reading an endorsement of Hillary Clinton as "always the smartest person in the room when it came to foreign policy."

The problem being, that may be exactly what we DON'T want in a President.

Posted by Carrington Ward | November 30, 2007 2:36 PM

Robert Powell makes an excellent point:

"If this was the real history, all we would ever have to do about foreign affairs is avoid electing George W. Bush. Seems inadequate as a policy."

It would be unfortunate if Iraqamok makes Democrats unlearn the salient lessons of Vietnam:

A) We can make some awfully dumb foreign policy decisions if we lose focus on basic national interests. "Making the world safe for Democracy" has been tried as a national interest before... it didn't work too well.

or

B) Don't elect presidents from Texas.

Posted by Carrington Ward | November 30, 2007 3:06 PM

"No one in their right mind is advocating starting a war with Iran . . ." --Robert Powell

Grammar aside, you're in tune with the general consensus on Podhoretz, et al.

Posted by Henderstock | November 30, 2007 6:23 PM