Residual Forces

It's too bad The New York Times's Patrick Healy has decided to report on Bill Richardson's point that "Senator Clinton’s comments are a stunning flip-flop — she’s been saying she would keep troops in Iraq for five years, until 2013, and now she comes up with an inconsistent, incredible turnaround" purely through the lens of Richardson's alleged vice presidential ambitions. Clearly, forward-looking Iraq policy is one of the most important issues on the table in this election. What's more, unlike health care or global warming, the new president will just get to implement his or her preferred policy by fiat.

I'd like to know what's going on. Of course, if Clinton really has flip-flopped away from her old position that I disagreed with and adopted a new, better position I'm not going to condemn her for that: being open to persuasive arguments and new evidence is a good thing. But I do want to know what her position is since she's had a pattern of misleading rhetoric on this score, promising to "end the war" but leave tens of thousands of soldiers in the war zone.

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign fires back with this rebuttal that, I think, does effectively rebut the charge of flip-flopping. Clinton has consistently said that, in office, she'll act swiftly to remove one or two brigades a month until we're down to a "vastly reduced" residual force. That's a little vague, and given that the incentives during the primary are to shade your position to the left I doubt it specifies a policy I agree with, but it's one she's consistently adhered to.

Comments

"But I do want to know what her position is since she's had a pattern of misleading rhetoric on this score"

This morning, Senator Clinton claimed she'd seen her father march with MLK in Iraq.

Posted by Petey | December 21, 2007 10:32 AM

Tangentially, there's a great piece in the LATimes today about the Clintons' decision to wage a campaign based on nothing but slime from the perspective of former Clinton administration officials.

Reed Hundt, who attended law school with Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, said he admired them both even though he was not supporting the New York senator's White House bid.

But he questioned some of the ex-president's recent statements, including a suggestion that a vote for the Illinois senator was like rolling the dice.

"President Clinton is going way too far -- too far into the politics of personal attack, which he knows is bad for the country," Hundt said. "It's not right for a former president to get out there and be demeaning any of our candidates.

"Calling Barack Obama 'a symbol' is not acceptable discourse," Hundt went on, referring to Clinton's comments in a recent interview with PBS' Charlie Rose. "Likening him to a TV commentator is an insult."

Posted by Petey | December 21, 2007 10:36 AM

"It's too bad The New York Times's Patrick Healy has decided to report on Bill Richardson's point ... purely through the lens of Richardson's alleged vice presidential ambitions."

But that's the correct way to report it.

Despite the misdirection, this is an attempt on Richardson's part to help Clinton, not hurt her. By drawing attention to the flip-flop, he's attempting to do two things:

1) Draw attention to the fact that her position of the day is less offensive to the base.

2) Draw attention to his own pure position to try to draw anti-war votes away from Obama and Edwards that are permanently unavailable to Clinton.

All of Bill Richardson's actions in this campaign should be assumed to be coming from Mark Penn's cellphone, even if it seems counterintuitive at first.

Posted by Petey | December 21, 2007 10:43 AM

http://facts.hillaryhub.com/archive/?id=4850

Posted by Gary Sugar | December 21, 2007 10:51 AM

This morning, Senator Clinton claimed she'd seen her father march with MLK in Iraq.

Yeah, and my great-great-whatever grandfather fought for Henry II.

Oh wait, he actually did ...
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | December 21, 2007 11:09 AM

This highlights one of the two reasons Clinton is an unacceptable nominee, and that's coming from someone who not only was open to her as the nominee back in January, but actually liked her.

If you pick a nominee based on who shares you're broader worldview, comes closest on policy preferences, and has a credible shot at winning, Clinton is basically an unknown on the first 2. Because she seems to go out of her way to make her views unknown, it's impossible to trust that she does share my worldview or policy preferences. She'll say one thing that makes you think she's right on board (I'll promise vigorous diplomacy with Iran) and then say something else that makes you think she's the complete opposite end of the spectrum (I will not be used for propaganda purposes!). And then you realize she never really gave a positive statement of what "diplomacy" means, vigorous or otherwise, or made clear how she would avoid being used for propaganda (a position that seems to actual reduce to any head-of-state meeting being nothing but propaganda, after all the negotiating has been done by envoys), and all she did was send a dog-whistle to the left and a dog-whistle to the right but said nothing of substance at all.

And that's not really inspiring much confidence at all.

And it's not like she has the strongest "electable" argument either.

So she fails the metric of candidate one could get behind.

And Petey hits the 2nd reason why she's unacceptable: her campaign, aside from being based on obscuring the differences between her and her rivals in both parties by keeping her positions unknown, she's tried to "earn" the nomination by simply destroying her rivals in the party, leaving her the only candidate left, as the default choice.

That is bad the party and bad for the country. And speaks ill of how she'd govern: putting her interests ahead of those of Democrats or America.

Posted by Michael | December 21, 2007 11:20 AM

What's changed in Iraq is that US oil interests had to be decoupled from the program of national unity, because it failed. Instead, the strategy now is to make a separate peace with the parts of Iraq that matter and ignore the increasingly irrelevant central government. A change in the establishment's notion of the scale of power necessary for resource extraction in Iraq will obviously lead to a change in establishment politicians' positions on overall deployment.

But, present these basic facts to a DC journalist and they'll change the subject to Clinton's cackle. That's the difference between the entertainment industry and people who think for a living.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | December 21, 2007 11:25 AM

I think if you read Clintons actual statements you will find, unless you are Matt, that Hillary has been consistent in her forward looking statements regarding Iraq.

Hillary is smart enough to know that any forward looking statement must be couched in language that gives a bit of wiggle room if circumstances change. But still, she is perfectly clear.

She wants to end the 'war' without giving up whatever utility having a small US presence in Iraq may actually provide. It is yet undetermined what that utility may actually be so her intent is begin a withdrawl of US troops at the rate of two brigades a month. If the withdrawl is uninteruped this will get most of our troups out within a year.

Right now her intention, oft repeated, is to leave enought troops in place to protect what remains, ie. our diplomatic mission, our training mission, our stability mission.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Posted by ken | December 21, 2007 11:25 AM

"And Petey hits the 2nd reason why she's unacceptable: her campaign, aside from being based on obscuring the differences between her and her rivals in both parties by keeping her positions unknown, she's tried to "earn" the nomination by simply destroying her rivals in the party, leaving her the only candidate left, as the default choice. That is bad the party and bad for the country. And speaks ill of how she'd govern: putting her interests ahead of those of Democrats or America."

It's really time for the Clintons to go.

Posted by Petey | December 21, 2007 11:27 AM

Hillary is smart enough to know that any forward looking statement must be couched in language that gives a bit of wiggle room if circumstances change.

She is, it must, it did, and they already have.
.

Posted by Grand Moff Texan | December 21, 2007 11:28 AM

So Matt, in an update, concedes that Hillary Clinton has been consistent in her statements regarding Iraq. This is funny as a little open mindedness and actual research would have shown this to be the case all along.

Yet, I predict that within a day or so Matt will again use right wing rhetoric, of the kind he grew up on and cannot bring himself to escape, to again mischaractorize Hillary Clinton.

It is pathetic how so many progressives fall for conservative BS.

Posted by ken | December 21, 2007 12:11 PM

I'm not sure what "consistent" means. Her position as clearly evolved over the last 4 1/2 years in SOME way, to take her from voting for the war resolution to now wanting to pull out some troops. Does anyone have a timeline of how her position has evolved?

Posted by Don Pedro | December 21, 2007 1:20 PM

I assume that Clinton, like most people voting to authorize military force, expected Saddam to fall pretty quickly, be replaced by a reasonably competent provisional government which we could support primarily by being their airforce, and most ground troops would be re-deployed.

That's still the plan, it's just that deciding first to rule Iraq with Bremer and the College Republicans, then stage elections which set off a free-for-all power struggle, has delayed the last stage.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 21, 2007 3:47 PM