Hillary Clinton’s Plan To End Iraq War-As A Campaign Issue
3 comments July 11th, 2007
From the moment Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her “presidential exploratory committee,” her vote supporting the Iraq war has followed her like the shadow of a White House intern. The Left of the Democratic Party has attacked her, not only for her original pro-war vote, but also Hillary’s hubris in refusing to show contrition for her vote. However, Hillary Clinton has managed an impressive political performance. While maintaining the rectitude of her own vote, by making trivial statements (”if I knew then what I know now…”), she has largely succeeded in deflecting the Democratic Left. Now Hillary has unveiled a “plan” whereby she will end the Iraq war. What sort of plan is it?
In reality, Hillary’s so-called plan is a plan to end Iraq as a negative campaign issue for her. She can now position herself as the anti-war candidate,and will no doubt campaign in the future on the basis of her great plan. But the plan is only great if you have not read it.
In fact, Hillary Clinton apparently had a group of consultants and spin-doctors jury-rig what, in essense, is a campaign marketing document, and not a thoughtful strategic plan. It is superficial, and perhaps ignores the most important challenge in ending the Iraq tragedy for America. This disaster unfolded because of a critical failure in American political leadership. Hillary Clinton was part of that leadership failure. A serious plan dealing with Iraq would go further than troop redeployments and meaningless phrases about international conferences and responsibility. It would analyze what went wrong with American decision making, and how such a catastrophe can be prevented in the future. However, a serious plan addressing that aspect of the Iraq calamity would have to recommend that politicians who failed America by voting to empower Bush to unleash an irrational war, including Hillary Clinton, must be excluded from senior posiitons of national leadership, including the presidency.
