The War Matters

As Matt Stoller notes there's a remarkable effort under way to excise the debate over the wisdom of the Iraq War from the Democratic primary. Certainly, there was more than that one issue in play. Nevertheless, it's essentially unprecedented for a challenger to unseat an establishment figure as well-entrenched as Clinton, and it's very clear to me that it was the war issue that gave Obama a plausible opening to mount a challenge.

The war alone didn't -- and couldn't have -- put Obama over the top, but it's what create a base of discontent with the "inevitable" Clinton and what allowed an alternative to get a hearing. And that's an important development, a world in which Clinton became the nominee would be a world in which there was no conceivable political upside to opposing any war ever.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Matthew Plew

Comments

Obama never allowed himself to be defined as the anti-war candidate while simultaneously taking that position in Iowa. His war history, more than his position, made it possible for him to win Iowa. It clearly didn't matter nearly so much after that, but Iowa was a vote against the Iraq War, a vote that was brought out in force by organization.

And it was Hillary's Nixonian-Bushian refusal to admit her mistake was what made the narrative possible.

Posted by Vincent | May 20, 2008 11:32 AM

And that's an important development, a world in which Clinton became the nominee would be a world in which there was no conceivable political upside to opposing any war ever.

This is a bit hyperbolic, but I agree with the thrust of what you're saying. If Hillary had voted against the war, she would have won easily. Even if she had come out strongly against the war a year ago, explained that she realized she had made a mistake, and explain what she had learned, etc, I believe she would have been able to beat Obama.

Even though Hillary is a good person and a strong candidate, its great seeing her lose, to see that accountability still matters.

Posted by Jim W | May 20, 2008 11:33 AM

If Hillary had started her campaign admitting that she fucked up and begging forgiveness she very well may be cruising to the nomination now and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Instead, Clinton maintained this very Bush-like "I can do no wrong" attitude until it was too late.

Interestingly enough, her attitude toward staying in the race at this point is very "you live in the reality based community while we create our reality" in a very Bush-Cheney kind of way.

Haven't people had enough of that shit? People call her "Nixon in a pantsuit". Tempermentally, isn't she more like "Bush in a pantsuit"?

Posted by calipygian | May 20, 2008 11:36 AM

Don't underestimate the significant portion of anti-Clinton voters in the democratic party and wider electorate. Even without the war issue, she was always going to have problems.

Posted by Helter | May 20, 2008 11:39 AM

Hmm, I'm not sure Obama's anti-war stance is all of what made him a viable challenger to Hillary. Obama became hugely popular because he was a promising, charismatic young politician first, who then happened to oppose the Iraq war, second and later. People have been talking about him since the 2004 convention, mainly about his charisma and intelligence and, you know, blackitude to boot. They were thinking "historical Democratic figure" more than "opposes the war so will win next time." That said, as the war went downhill his original stance certainly didn't hurt.

Posted by Bill | May 20, 2008 11:40 AM

there is so a precedent, and it's one that matthew should know about, with loads of implications in many directions: george mcgovern, 1972.

the establishment candidate was ed muskie.

Posted by howard | May 20, 2008 11:41 AM

If Hillary had started her campaign admitting that she fucked up and begging forgiveness she very well may be cruising to the nomination now and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I think it's less about an apology per se than about showing, as I think Edwards, Kerry, Biden, Dodd and others have at various points in the past few years, that she had learned something from the AUMF and it's consequences. No better example of that than Jack Murtha.

Instead, Clinton has repeatedly demonstrated--Kyl-Lieberman, 3 AM, 'obliterate' --not just that she hasn't learned a damn thing since October 20002, not that she made a mistake with her vote, but that she still sees the world through a Cold War-Joe Lieberman prism, and that she doesn't think her vote was a mistake, what George Bush did with her vote was a mistake.

The fact that none of her supporters, from the campaign to the op/ed pages to the lowly comments sections of blogs, ever mention the war in discussing her loss says it all, about her campaign and her supporters.

Posted by Jim | May 20, 2008 11:43 AM

Hillary allowed the fear of being painted as "weak" by Republicans to drive her vote on Iraq. Following it up with a potentially disastrous Iran vote sealed her fate. It's that suspension of clear thought out of political fear that made her such a weak candidate.

For somebody who prides herself to be a fighter, there are some things she cowers from. Somebody who is so easily manipulated by outside forces can not make a good president.

Posted by LFC | May 20, 2008 11:45 AM

1) The Iraq War reviewed a deep corruption within a segment of the Democratic Party --including Hillary.

Hillary should be denied the nomination not only because she sent 4000 of our children to their deaths in an unnecessary war with Iraq.

But because she is also clearly willing to send 40,000 more of our soldiers to their deaths in IRAN. Because billionaire Haim Saban thinks it "will be good for Israel".

2) Unfortunately, as Richard and I have noted here several times over the past months, the same corruption that caused the Iraq war will lead Bush to attack Iran before his term is over.

In order to stick Obama and anti-war Democrats with a fait accompli. It's the only way Haim Saban and the Israel Lobby can manipulate the US government into attacking Iran now that Hillary has been denied the nomination.

And Hillary and the Israel Whores in the Democratic caucus will support Bush.

3) Confirmation of our calculations just came in.
From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080520/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iran

"WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday denied a published report in Israel that said President Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term in January.

A story in the Jerusalem Post quoted a "senior official" there as saying that Bush plans to attack Iran in the coming months. The story says the unidentified official claimed that a "senior member" of Bush's traveling entourage made the statement about attacking Iran in a closed meeting. Bush was in Israel last week."

4) Anybody still wondering why Admiral Fallon was forced into resigning as Commander of CENTCOM?
From http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336849,00.html

"The misperceptions relate to an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed Fallon as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program."

Posted by Don Williams | May 20, 2008 11:46 AM

Hillary voting against the war would not have been the honest vote at that moment in time and so she didn't make it. Her argument that it was the right vote for her at that time is true if not persuasive. Obama didn't have to make the vote, wasn't on the national stage and made his speech at no risk to himself. These are extraordinarily different circumstances.
Obama and his team of strategists made this difference work for him but it all stinks a bit when one looks at his voting record for supporting the war.
Hillary would not have been any more successful if she had been the anti-war candidate. It wouldn't have satisfied the third party crazies or hillary/bill haters who came on board for Obama. that is a silly argument and lacks any vestige of truthiness.
The anti-war barack gave cover for those who oppose her to oppose her but they'd've found other cover.
Those who hate only need a reason to hate and those that trust only need a reason to distrust.
Hillary's stubborness on the issue is the result of integrity, not the result of stubborness.

Posted by Michael C. | May 20, 2008 11:50 AM

Well, I think Obama ran a campaign to overthrow a certain conception of the Democratic Party and how it should conduct itself, with Clinton voluntarily choosing to defend that conception (ultimately unsuccessfully). And so while Clinton's vote for the war certainly was representative of what Obama was running against--and perhaps the single most important such example--it was just one aspect of this much larger contest.

Posted by DTM | May 20, 2008 11:55 AM

Obama and his team of strategists made this difference work for him but it all stinks a bit when one looks at his voting record for supporting the war.

Jeez. For the millionth time, there's a difference between supporting a disastrous invasion of a country in the first place, and supporting the efforts to stabilize the country after the disastrous invasion has already taken place. Obama already explained this in his "driving the bus into a ditch" analogy, for those who are too thick to be able to make the distinction themselves.

Posted by Jim W | May 20, 2008 11:57 AM

Hillary's stubborness on the issue is the result of integrity, not the result of stubborness.

The political calculation of appearing to have integrity, you mean. And let's not forget Hillary's been running basically a red state campaign, where her vote for the war may not look all that ill-advised.

Posted by Bill | May 20, 2008 12:01 PM

Hillary's Bush's stubborness on the issue is the result of integrity, not the result of stubborness.

Fixed.

Like I said: tempermentally, she's Bush in a pantsuit.

Posted by calipygian | May 20, 2008 12:01 PM

Michael, there was no right vote for the Iraq War. "Right vote for her at the time" sounds like nothing more than crass political calculation that allowed thousands of people to die and billions of dollars to be spent in a war with no justification.

And yes there would still have been some anti-Clinton voters, but what about the people who weren't anti-Clinton but were anti-Iraq War? Like...me, for example. I can tell you for sure that it was the defining reason I never thought about backing Hillary. I'm guessing there a few others like me out there.

Posted by Chris O. | May 20, 2008 12:04 PM

Re Michael C's comment "Those who hate only need a reason to hate and those that trust only need a reason to distrust.
Hillary's stubborness on the issue is the result of integrity, not the result of stubborness."
-------------
This is bullshit, of course.

Senator Bob Graham --ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence -- and Nancy Pelosi --on the House Intel Committee -- stated in late 2002 that they had seen no intelligence indicating that Saddam was an imminent threat.

Hillary and her staff could have done the same job as the Iraq Commission later did -- and discovered that Bush's case for war fell apart like a cheap rug if you tugged on any one of several loose threads.

She didn't do that -- because if you fetch soft drinks for Israeli billionaire Haim Saban when he visits you in the White House, you have to do a hell of a lot more if you want him to help put you BACK into the White House.

Hillary Supporters are either too fucking stupid -- or too fucking disloyal to this country -- to acknowledge what she has done.

Posted by Don Williams | May 20, 2008 12:06 PM

just to address the "vote" side for a moment: there would have been nothing wrong with clinton voting for the authorization as a means of forcing inspectors in and then acknowledging that the inspectors had undermined the case for war. she would have been fine; it was the failure on that latter matter, not the original vote.

Posted by howard | May 20, 2008 12:08 PM

"Obama didn't have to make the vote, wasn't on the national stage and made his speech at no risk to himself."

Go back in time - there was quite a bit of war hysteria in USA, and Barack had a LOT to lose. If he had been wrong and there really was a great herd of ponies in Iraq, as we were all promised, his shot at the presidency would dimmed dramatically.

Posted by AZmando | May 20, 2008 12:08 PM

I second Chris O.

I would have had a much easier time supporting Hillary had she come out and said that she cast a bad vote for the AUMF from the beginning.

All the smarminess, dishonesty and delusion that this campaign has displayed has its roots in that initial failure.

Posted by calipygian | May 20, 2008 12:09 PM

Would Obama have voted for the AUMF if he'd been in the Senate then? Maybe, but I doubt it. I don't think it matters, though. We punish people for things they did, not things that they might have done if the circumstances were different.

And punishing Hillary (by denying her the nomination) is a very healthy thing. Politicians who vote for mistaken wars ought to pay a price.

Posted by jimBOB | May 20, 2008 12:10 PM

Let us not forget (lest we forget) that Hillary cast her vote for AUMF with full knowledge of her intended run for POTUS in either 04 or 08. She not only had an eye to the then-current popularity of the war; she made a future "national security" bet, which was easy enough to make given the extremely low political cost near-term. Her recipe for winning in 2008 is to siphon a lot of red-staters, be they D or R or I, and thinks looking "tough" can only be to her advantage, while spinning her vote is comparatively easy. You know, kinda like Kerry thought.

Posted by Bill | May 20, 2008 12:10 PM

I want to know why America seems to have more "pro-Israel" whack-jobs than Israel does? How come the majority over there have more realistic positions?

I guess it's like everything else the chickenhawks support. Your view is a lot different when you're actually bearing the brunt of some boneheaded policy than it is when you're safe and far away from the battlefield.

Posted by LFC | May 20, 2008 12:12 PM

To give Michael C's argument some credit, it is true that if the only thing different about Clinton was that she had voted against the war, she would still be the candidate who supported a law banning flag burning, and supported the gax tax holiday, and argued that the votes of only some Americans really count, and so on. Accordingly, it is indeed not the case that her vote for the war is the only thing discouraging people from supporting her.

Of course that is the problem with these counterfactuals: her support for the war was a consequence of the kind of politician she has chosen to be. So, you don't get a consistent alternative world if you just change her war vote, and don't also change the rest of her behavior as a politician, and indeed the very sort of politician she has chosen to be.

Posted by DTM | May 20, 2008 12:13 PM

Re: The Iraq War reviewed a deep corruption within a segment of the Democratic Party --including Hillary.

Not corruption at all-- just political caution. The Democrats have been smeared as weak and even treasonous by the GOP for years. And other wars (Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I) which the GOP started were all quick and solid successes. The Iraq War was also expected to be another success, and from a purely military standpoint it was: the Iraqi army was defeated, Baghdad was captured and Saddam was toppled. If the war had ended there Hillary's vote (and the support of other Democratic figures) would not have mattered-- it would be water long over the dam. But the Bush administration decided to stay in Iraq and proceeded to screw up the "peace" six ways to Sunday. That's why the war remained an issue and Hillary et al look so bad now.

Posted by JonF | May 20, 2008 12:14 PM

Go back in time - there was quite a bit of war hysteria in USA, and Barack had a LOT to lose.

Exactly. Atrios often reminds us of this fact. Those of us who opposed this war from the beginning were attacked as pacifists, unserious, treasonous, DFH's, etc. To say that Obama "merely made a speech" or to diminish the courage it took for a politician with ambitions for the presidency to do this during the insane political climate of the time are either forgetting recent history, or willfully misrepresenting it. In the case of Hillary and her supporters, I suspect the latter.

Posted by drjimcooper | May 20, 2008 12:14 PM

Obama didn't have to make the vote, wasn't on the national stage and made his speech at no risk to himself.

Anyone who thinks a Senate candidate who opposed the war in 2002 wasn't taking a risk: Go watch the Dixie Chicks movie, it's a convenient way to slip back in time and remember what the atmosphere was like back then.

Remember Dennis Miller and Bill O'Reilly re-inventing Bush's 'deck of cards' (Saddam was the ace of spades, I believe; Bagdad Bob was the Joker.... memory fades)? Miller and O'Reilly painted Robert Byrd as "Enemy number one".

Posted by Jim | May 20, 2008 12:21 PM

whenever one of these discussion breaks out, though, i am reminded that if the price of admission to the anti-vietnam-war movement was voting against the gulf of tonkin resolution, lbj would have escalated to 700,000 troops in 1968 and not dropped out of the race, because there wouldn't have been an anti-war movement....

Posted by howard | May 20, 2008 12:28 PM

Anyone who thinks a Senate candidate who opposed the war in 2002 wasn't taking a risk: Go watch the Dixie Chicks movie, it's a convenient way to slip back in time and remember what the atmosphere was like back then.

There are two ways of looking at this. If you're running in a district/region/state where opposing the war gets you elected, it's not a big risk. If you know you have presidential ambitions in 4 to 6 years you're taking a risk with deferred penalty/payoff. Obama may have made himself more nationally unpopular temporarily with such a speech (which I don't recall making huge waves) but he wasn't going to lose his Senate race or the rights to his eventual place to speak at the next national convention.

Posted by Bill | May 20, 2008 12:30 PM

Re Michael C's comment "Hillary voting against the war would not have been the honest vote at that moment in time "
------------
Hmmm. Michael's implying that an older, wiser Hillary would act differently today?

Let's check:

From http://www.abcnews.go.com/print?id=4698059

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

And how many US soldiers would die, Hillary?
Ah, fuck them. They're just "hard working" dumbshits from places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, right? A couple of shots of Crown Royal with their fathers and you can forget all those coffins at Fort Dix.

Posted by Don Williams | May 20, 2008 12:32 PM

All this being said, it is still unimaginable to me how so many people thought this war would go well enough to justify voting for it. Obama's position ought to have seemed like a no-brainer.

Posted by Bill | May 20, 2008 12:35 PM

Obama may have made himself more nationally unpopular temporarily with such a speech (which I don't recall making huge waves) but he wasn't going to lose his Senate race or the rights to his eventual place to speak at the next national convention.

Posted by Bill

All this being said, it is still unimaginable to me how so many people thought this war would go well enough to justify voting for it. Obama's position ought to have seemed like a no-brainer.

Posted by Bill

Hindsight is twenty/twenty. Things weren't so clear then. 70% of this country supported the war in the spring of 2003.

Posted by Jim | May 20, 2008 12:42 PM

right on Bill...Hillary was representing a hotbed of right wing militarism....New York!

Posted by chimp | May 20, 2008 12:43 PM

Not corruption at all-- just political caution. The Democrats have been smeared as weak and even treasonous by the GOP for years.

And those that voted for the war for those political reasons actually did prove themselves to be weak, including Hillary. If they had the strength to stand up to the GOP long ago, they wouldn't have been pushed around so easily.

And there is a time to stand up for what is right, not what is politically expedient for yourself. Hillary missed that opportunity. She put political calculation and self interest ahead of the interests of the country.

And other wars (Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I) which the GOP started were all quick and solid successes.

Anybody who had any inkling of history knew that this was different. Why didn't George HW go into Iraq? Because he understood history, and understood the cluster-f*** that would ensue. Anybody who used the above wars as analogies to drive their vote is not fit to be president.

But the Bush administration decided to stay in Iraq and proceeded to screw up the "peace" six ways to Sunday. That's why the war remained an issue and Hillary et al look so bad now.

"Decided to stay?" Multiple people stated that if we went in, we could win militarily but would be bogged down in a civil war. Again, these people actually understood history.

Sorry, but the "boo, hoo, hoo ... Hillary looks bad because of George Bush" doesn't cut it. Too many intelligent people who understood the region predicted the disaster it became. Hillary, on the other hand, couldn't even be bothered to read all the intelligence reports before voting. Two words for Hillary and McCain; POOR JUDGMENT.

Posted by LFC | May 20, 2008 12:45 PM

Obama's position ought to have seemed like a no-brainer

Ough to, yes, but wasn't. What was probably working in Obama's favor is that he was not living in Washington or traveling/working within the establishment media bubble, so it seemed obvious to him and us.

However, "acceptable" sentiment among public figures was highly in favor of the war, and such a stance in favor of the was the "entry ticket" that would give you a national platform. Obama easily could have parlayed support of the war into something that would give him national attention. He chose to make the correct decision and then figured that his upcoming senate race and career plans after that would work themselves out. From a publicity perspective, opposing the war was going to be something that was going to keep him in the wilderness in 2002 and 2003.

Posted by Tyro | May 20, 2008 12:48 PM

And, I should add, Obama was risking the possibility that national sentiment against war-opposers would STILL be just as hostile in 2004 as it was in 2002 and early 2003, forever denying him the label of "serious." Now, I don't think he actually worried about this, because he saw that such an idea would be ridiculous, despite the irrationality of 2002-2003, but plenty of people were thinking the exact same way, Hillary included.

Posted by Tyro | May 20, 2008 12:54 PM

From a publicity perspective, opposing the war was going to be something that was going to keep him in the wilderness in 2002 and 2003.

No.

From Wikipedia, American popular opinion on invasion of Iraq:

An early January 2003 poll showed rapidly decreasing support for an invasion, although there was still more public support than there was prior to the Gulf War a decade ago.[citation needed] Much of this appeared to be for the same reason that France and Germany opposed the war; namely the US public believing that the weapons inspectors should be given the time they need to complete their investigations.[citation needed] US officials downplayed this shift in public opinion, claiming that it was not a true reflection of the public mood.[citation needed]

A poll conducted at the time by The New York Times and CBS News released showed even less support for the US-led war.[citation needed] Approximately 2 out of 3 respondents wanted the government to wait for the UN inspections to end, and only 31% supported using military force immediately. Interestingly, this same poll showed that a majority of Americans believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but did not expect UN inspectors to find them. These numbers indicated a dramatic drop in support, as, two months prior, most polls showed about two-thirds of those polled supporting military action. However, about 60% of those polled also supported, if necessary, the use of military action to remove Saddam from power which closely mirrored recent polls taken by Time Magazine, CNN, FOX News, USA Today, CBS News and other news organizations. Current polls also showed that most Americans did not think that Saddam was cooperating with inspectors. [5]

Some polls showed that Bush's 2003 State of the Union increased US support for the invasion, but other polls showed that it had little effect.[citation needed] Most polls showed that support for the invasion, depending on how the question is phrased, was at between 55-65% (58% according to CNN/USA Today, 57% according to the LA Times, and 67% according to Fox).[citation needed] However, the same polls also suggested that most Americans would still like to see more evidence against Iraq, and for UN weapons inspections to continue before making an invasion. For example, an ABC news poll reported than only 10% of Americans favored giving the inspectors less than a few weeks; 41% favored giving them a few weeks, 33% a few months, and 13% more than that. [1]

Posted by Bill | May 20, 2008 12:56 PM

"The war alone didn't -- and couldn't have -- put Obama over the top..."

On the contrary, it was this, and foreign policy vision in general (i.e. one that is not dictated directly from the pages of the Jersalem Post OpEd section), that made Obama the only rational choice.

Posted by HeavyJ | May 20, 2008 1:32 PM

if the price of admission to the anti-vietnam-war movement was voting against the gulf of tonkin resolution, lbj would have escalated to 700,000 troops in 1968 and not dropped out of the race, because there wouldn't have been an anti-war movement....

Several points. First, I don't think that at the time of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that there was voluminous public evidence that the backers of the resolution were dishonest and untrustworthy (unlike the case with the Bush administration at the time of the AUMF).

Second, what we're saying here isn't that the Hillary Clinton should automatically lose her membership in the party due to the AUMF vote, just that she be denied the nomination. She's welcome to become a part of the anti-Iraq war movement if she can get her head out of the neoconservative camp. But she, like Edwards (another AUMF supporter, albeit one who later repudiated it), isn't going to become president.

My third point is that while it's true that votes such as AUMF are politically tricky and perhaps require careful judgment, the fact is we need our president to get these issues right, even if the evidence is conflicted. And we need presidents to be able to accurately assess the credibility of opponents. (In this case it meant realizing that Bush was a liar.) Mistakenly voting to help start a war really ought to be disqualifying in a presidential candidate.

Posted by jimBOB | May 20, 2008 1:44 PM

By the way, I think it is a bit of a red herring to ask whether Obama's stance on the war took political courage or not. The fact is that he didn't just oppose the war, but he also laid out a clear argument against the war, one which has since been proven correct.

So, to me the big takeaway is not so much that Obama exhibited political courage, as that he exhibited excellent judgment. And to be clear, it is fine if you want to credit him with having the courage to follow through on his judgments in the face of a lot of contrary voices in the media and his political party, but I do think it is his judgment which matters most.

Posted by DTM | May 20, 2008 1:48 PM

Either she thought the war (with Bush at the helm, or didn't she realize who she was authorizing to invade Iraq?) was a great idea (it wasn't) or she knew it was a bad idea but supported it anyway because it would be good for her personal ambitions (which it turns out it wasn't either).

Either way, I'm glad we found someone else.

Posted by aleks | May 20, 2008 1:48 PM

Was that the "courageous" anti-war speech that was delivered at some anti-war rally in the most liberal state senate district in IL?

The one that nobody there remembers?

The one that was difficult to find when it seemed we were "winning"?

Posted by John Petty | May 20, 2008 5:34 PM

jimBOB, perhaps you missed my point: i'm not saying that clinton handled the iraq vote well (she could have gotten away with the vote, as i noted above, if she had said i voted yes in order to get the inspectors back in and now that they haven't found anything, i cannot support this war).

i'm saying that there is a tremendous amount of holier-than-thouness about that vote that seeps into every discussion: after all, i would argue that clinton's position on iraq today is marginally superior to obama's, but that's never allowed to be brought up because so many people want to say "fuck her, she voted yes on iraq." (indeed, you did! without the "fuck her," of course!)

as for tonkin, there was plenty of evidence at the time that no one was really clear what had happened, and there was plenty of reason to believe the domino theory was a crock. yes, the world has changed a lot since then, and we're much more suspicious, but purism is the great achille's heel of the left.

PS. because i know by now from bitter experience that as soon as you write something like this, people go nuts and jump to conclusions, i did not support clinton for president because i don't believe in monarchical succession, so i never had to come to terms with whether her 2008 position on iraq bails out her previous poor judgements. i simply note the purism factor for its general importance.

Posted by howard | May 20, 2008 6:09 PM

"For somebody who prides herself to be a fighter, there are some things she cowers from. Somebody who is so easily manipulated by outside forces can not make a good president.

Posted by LFC | May 20, 2008 11:45 AM"

The best part is that when confronted with a fight we could have won rather easily, Bosnia, she was the one who convinced Bill to not go in earlier because it would be another Vietnam. She read Kaplan's "Balkan Ghosts," crapped her pants, gave it to Bill to read and then Bill decided not to go in until the Serbs brought down the Srebrenica UN safe area and made NATO look like a bunch of wimps. She simply doesn't understand foreign policy, only too clever by half political calculation.

Posted by Reality Man | May 20, 2008 8:46 PM

Don: "Hillary Supporters are either too fucking stupid -- or too fucking disloyal to this country -- to acknowledge what she has done."

Actually - they're both.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 20, 2008 10:47 PM

Anyone who thinks a Senate candidate who opposed the war in 2002 wasn't taking a risk: Go watch the Dixie Chicks movie, it's a convenient way to slip back in time and remember what the atmosphere was like back then.

As Atrios noted recently, 2002-3 in particular was a filthy dirty time in American politics, with filthy electioneering, dubious elections (GA-Diebold) and a war fever that infected many and turned those it didn't affect into pariahs.

You can't know what Obama would have done in the US Senate in 2002. There are so many ifs. But Clinton has never even acknowledged that 2002-3 was a fucked up time in national politics to which she either fell victim or was a willing participant.

Why? Because admitting either of those would imply that she might make the same mistake again.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 21, 2008 2:15 AM