The Case for Hillary Clinton, Part Three

Hillary and the War
By late 2003 I knew whom I wanted as the Democratic challenger to President Bush’s reelection bid. My choice was Senator Bob Graham of Florida.

Graham, a mainstream liberal, was a perfect fit for me. On numerous issues, such as economics, he followed the legacy of the New Deal. He believed in a strong military that would be used with great discretion. On medical research he was a champion, being one of the first Senators to embrace federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. But more importantly, he voted against the 2002 legislation authorizing President Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein. Then serving on the Senate’s Intelligence Committee he studied the National Intelligence Estimate on the potential Iraqi threat. He concluded none existed.

When Graham’s candidacy evaporated, I gravitated towards Wesley Clark, a man who had command and diplomatic experience in the military. Like Graham, he opposed the Iraq War from the outset. After Clark withdrew I wound up voting for John Edwards in the New York Primary and then had to settle for John Kerry.

I have opposed this war from the very start. It destroys our moral standing in the world; instead of weakening the sources of terrorism, it has served as a recruiting device while truly bringing al-Qaeda into Mesopotamia; it is wrecking our military; and most of all, it caused the death and maiming of thousands of American while doing the very same to hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

As a New Yorker I opposed Hillary’s vote giving President Bush the authorization to use force against Iraq. Judging by the neoconservatives that surrounded President Bush it was clear to see exactly what the administration was ultimately would do with this power. I wished that Hillary (as well as Senator Schumer) had followed Senator Graham’s lead. And I offer no excuse for her not voting for the Levin Amendment.

But with that said, there were many other Democrats who voted and acted as exactly Hillary did. In fact, Senator Kerry’s speech delineating his support for the same measure mirrors many of the same arguments made by Hillary.

Indeed a closer review of her 2003 statement in support of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein reveals language very much on par with that of 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry—someone who does not receive the very same scorn the junior Senator from New York receives:

Some people favor attacking Saddam Hussein now, with any allies we can muster, in the belief that one more round of weapons inspections would not produce the required disarmament, and that deposing Saddam would be a positive good for the Iraqi people and would create the possibility of a secular democratic state in the Middle East, one which could perhaps move the entire region toward democratic reform.

This view has appeal to some, because it would assure disarmament; because it would right old wrongs after our abandonment of the Shiites and Kurds in 1991, and our support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980's when he was using chemical weapons and terrorizing his people; and because it would give the Iraqi people a chance to build a future in freedom.

However, this course is fraught with danger. We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak.

If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan?

So Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option.

And towards the end, there was this often overlooked remark:

I believe the best course is to go to the UN for a strong resolution that scraps the 1998 restrictions on inspections and calls for complete, unlimited inspections with cooperation expected and demanded from Iraq. I know that the Administration wants more, including an explicit authorization to use force, but we may not be able to secure that now, perhaps even later. But if we get a clear requirement for unfettered inspections, I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 UN resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998.

If we get the resolution that President Bush seeks, and if Saddam complies, disarmament can proceed and the threat can be eliminated.

John Edwards voted this same way as well as several others who now oppose this unnecessary war. Even then-Air America personality and current Senatorial candidate Al Franken supported the President’s decision to go to war. It was a judgment call that many liberals in good standing got wrong.

We all know that Senator Obama—then a state senator from Illinois in 2002—echoed many of Senator Graham’s grounds in opposing the legislation that enabled military action. On this issue, he was correct and Hillary was wrong. And yet I still am still compelled to support Hillary over Obama for the Democratic nomination.

Subsequent Deeds

Hillary has made her mistake. However, while she has not done so with words, her subsequent deeds are the apology many of us seek. The issue now is how to best end the American occupation in Iraq. And to her credit, Hillary pledges to begin withdrawing our troops sixty days from her Inauguration.

Now I have a good friend whose opinions I deeply respect and, like me, was recently a Joe Biden supporter. After Biden bowed out, I supported Hillary and my friend threw is support behind Obama. He has proclaimed his displeasure with Hillary by saying, “I think her inability to admit a mistake on her vote for the war is inexcusable.”

But upon closer scrutiny, this characterization does not measure up. And while Joe Biden called his vote “a mistake,” the Delaware Senator has never made the apology he now demands from Senator Clinton. To demand such an auto de fe apology from one and not the other smacks of having a double standard for similarly situated individuals.

Ultimately, my good friend is arguing semantics. Over and over again, Hillary has repeatedly stated that she would not have voted for the war knowing what she now knows. When recently interviewed on Meet the Press she did not dispute Tim Russert’s description of her vote as a mistake.

This is the polar opposite of Senator Joe Lieberman’s abhorrent behavior. Still, some of Hillary’s critics on the Left speak of her as if she were the second coming of Senator Lieberman, a most unfortunate and inaccurate comparison.

Not only has he never admitted the error of his ways, but he has dug his heals into the same sandy ground where only President Bush’s most die-hard supporters now stand. Even today we see the Connecticut Democrat-turned-Independent openly campaigning for Senator John McCain, a man who openly talks of America being in Iraq one hundred years from now.

Hillary’s contrition by deed has been continually pointed out that since Obama’s arrival in the Senate in 2005 they have virtually the same voting record on issues concerning Iraq. Media Matters laid it out:

But the claim that Clinton was once one of the "staunchest" backers" of the Iraq war does not withstand scrutiny -- nor does the claim that her criticism of the war is recent. While Clinton did vote in favor of the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, less than seven months after the war began, she expressed doubt about President Bush's leadership in the war, saying in an October 17, 2003, floor statement, that her "yes" vote for an $87 billion supplemental appropriation "was a vote for our troops, it was a vote for our mission. ... [I]t was not a vote for our national leadership." During the same statement, Clinton accused the Bush administration of having "gilded the lily" on pre-war Iraq intelligence at "the cost of perhaps not being able to take actions in the future that are necessary to our well-being and our interests because we may look like the nation or at the least the administration that cried wolf.

Judging Beyond the War
It is more than fair that choosing whether or not to take a nation to war is a decision by which to judge competence. But it is equally fair when judging Hillary’s erroneous vote whether she has tried to undo the harm done. In my estimation, she has.

There is also much else at stake than the war. With the central issue of the election turning more towards the economy Healthcare, an are where I believe she is far superior to Obama is also a prime consideration. And of equal concern is this recent news item that could cast doubt as to whether Obama’s inspiring rhetoric does indeed match his own deeds (it is clearly a matter that requires a response).

In viewing the large picture it would be a great mistake to judge the Presidential race within the vacuum of the war. It is with an eye to these increasingly prominent domestic issues where I will pick up Part IV of this series.