Clinton on Iraq

Oliver Willis rightfully takes Sen. Clinton to the woodshed over her continued tap dancing over Iraq. The facts are these. America’s involvement in Iraq has been as wasteful as it was unnecessary. To plenty of us, it was clear that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 and was not a significantly greater threat to the U.S. than any number of other countries around the globe. Barack Obama was one of those people. He was criticizing the war before the war started in the context of a Senate campaign when such a position wasn’t necessarily popular.

Clinton still hasn’t admitted she was wrong to vote for the war. She doesn’t have to, of course. She says her war vote was based on her “considered judgment” at the time. But then she pretends she was critical of the war in Iraq before Obama was. This just isn’t true. Obama was criticizing the war before Clinton voted for it.

We’re supposed to vote for Clinton (or McCain for that matter) based on all of their foreign policy expertise? It was this so-called expertise that drove us straight into the ditch. What Oliver Willis suggests about Clinton’s Iraq war vote is unprovable, but I think it’s likely the case:

At the time Sen. Obama was running for his seat and criticizing the war before it even began, Sen. Clinton was lining up with the rest of the senate to burnish her national security credentials and vote for the war in Iraq.

That’s my take on so many of the “centrist” Democrats (as if it’s radical, left-wing stuff to oppose an unnecessary expansion of government expenditures to engage in an interventionist war of choice). People like Clinton and Kerry, Lieberman and Bayh, Daschle and Reid just had their fingers to the political winds and guessed that they’d be penalized in the future if they voted against the war. So, they abdicated their responsibility to vote for good policy and went with the path of least resistance. That happens, I guess; but it was a pass-fail test, and I haven’t been coy about which side I think is which. There is forgiveness to be had if one demonstrates an ability to learn from one’s mistakes — Edwards went this route. He recognized that he cast his vote the wrong way. Clinton hasn’t achieved such recognition. This makes suspect her claims (and those of McCain, incidentally) to superior expertise in foreign policy.

If there were someone with a long and distinguished resume who made the right decision about Iraq who still had a chance to win the Presidency, maybe that would be a compelling reason to vote for that person over Obama on the basis of foreign policy. But, no such person exists. My political calculus suggests that the “pro” of “right on Iraq” outweighs the “con” of “doesn’t have a long resume”.