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foreign policy test: clinton, a deer in the headlights?
Pregnant Pause
by JENNIFER SKALKA
It was, in this reporter's opinion, the most interesting moment in today's Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:
"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.
Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.
Take a listen ...
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2008/02/pregnant_pause.html
john dickerson writes:
Mark Penn pointed me to Clinton's 1995 speech in Beijing, in which she declared that women's rights were human rights. A fine speech and a great message, and boy, I bet her hosts didn't like it one bit, but that doesn't really constitute the testing that this powerful ad brings to mind. Also, if we're talking about speeches, then I think Obama has that covered. He has been arguing for some time that he made a speech in 2002 about why the Iraq war was a bad idea. And hasn't the Clinton team been knocking that back as just a speech?
Comments (20)
When Obama gives a speech, it's just a speech (or worse, just empty words.) When Clinton gives a speech, it's proof that she's been tested in a crisis. Whatever. I'm just waiting to hear them say that the media treats them unfairly for asking these goons to provide an example to back up their claims.
I've heard a lot about the empty words of Barack Obama recently, but I keep hearing Clinton gives speeches where it's nothing but boilerplate about being vetted, having experience, the rolling up of sleeves and "solutions" (and my work in the IT field has trained my bullshit detector to go off whenever I hear this word.) Empty rhetoric if I've ever heard it.
And, yet, you see what happens when someone asks them to explain herself.
Kudos to Dickerson for actually asking a relevant question.
March 2, 2008 2:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary gave a better speech than Obama at the time of the AUMF. But Hillary was in the Senate, was representing a state that had been hit by terrorist attacks, had the obligation to do something about changing the Middle East playing field. She pushed for a return of inspectors, and a hard "last chance to do right" policy for Hussein - one that Qaddafi, the IRA and ETA seemed to understand.
It's easy to criticize when you're on the sidelines. Once Obama's been in the game, he either played it the same or he was MIA off campaigning.
March 2, 2008 2:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
wow desidero.. you have all the hillary talking points memorized. GOOD FOR YA!
you know hillary authorized another war? with IRAN? by voting to name the iranian revolutionary guard a terrorist organization? good thing it didnt pass.. how's she gonna defend that one?
MIA? where was she on senator dodd's fisa bill and in the torture ban resolution? where was she on those two critical votes? she was in virginia at the time. right next to washington DC. YET both obama and mccain went to go vote.
where was she?!
March 2, 2008 2:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
You know Obama didn't manage to make it back to vote on Kyl-Lieberman? Can you tell me what war, where it is, when it will be?
Obama in 2002 said Hussein was absolutely no danger to the US or his neighbors. Despite having medium range missiles, despite having $3 billion a year in oil-for-food kickbacks to work with, despite presumed bio-chemical programs. Even in January 2003, after 2 months of inspections, Hans Blix was still worrying about missing anthrax and VX.
You folks better get better talking points before the November campaign. American voters are big on security, and play it a lot nastier than Hillary. Obama's recent statement post-Bhutto slaying saying Pakistan was self-sufficient enough to clean up its own mess.... Silly, simply silly.
March 2, 2008 3:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
"American voters are big on security, and play it a lot nastier than Hillary."
I'd like to let the world know how sick and tired I am of hearing bobbleheads justify their opinions by saying that everyone agrees with them. "American voters are big on security"? Give me a break. What you mean is that you personally are big on security.
If big talk about security were still big with Americans, Bush would still have 80% approval ratings. It isn't and he doesn't.
"But Hillary was in the Senate, was representing a state that had been hit by terrorist attacks, had the obligation to do something about changing the Middle East playing field. She pushed for a return of inspectors, and a hard "last chance to do right" policy for Hussein - one that Qaddafi, the IRA and ETA seemed to understand."
Interesting that you left out Osama bin Laden (the terrorist who attacked the state Clinton was representing, in case you've forgotten). If you seriously believe the point you're trying to make, explain to me how exactly Bush taught bin Laden a lesson by stopping the attack on him in order to pulverise Hussein.
March 2, 2008 6:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
If poll ratings were votes, Hillary would have been the candidate 3 months ago, Obama would have won New Hampshire and Romney or Huckabee would be representing the Republicans.
What you seem to miss is that going after one terrorist group is not the same as dealing with a long-term simmering problem of anti-US hatred, which included Qaddafi, Hussein, Iran's mullahs, Al Qaeda, Syria, Pakistan, etc.
Now I could write a book about how screwed up Bush got the equation, but if you find an abandoned building used as a crack house by gangs, tossing out one gang just means another will turn up that night. So there you have those on the right with their myopic strategies, and those on the left abstractly acknowledging there's a problem but in practice being reluctant to promote tough serious programs. Plus some grand-standing. Yes, there's PR involved. Someone had the nerve to defend Hussein as "having a big inefficient country, of course he couldn't account for his VX gas". Well fuck him. Should have let inspectors in quicker, should have dropped the shell game. He misplayed his hand, and I have no sympathy - he got an extra 13 years of power out of it, that's all he gets. It's this kind of hardness that the Democrats need if they're going to effectively represent seriousness in foreign policy. Obama just assumed Hussein had nothing dangerous, that because Bush was lying about the nuclear threat to get support for war, that none of the other concerns by the whole intelligence community were valid.
Bill Clinton's Guardian speech in March 2003 was again a type of triangulation - hard and fast time schedules for cooperation in place of immediate invasion. If you go to Hans Blix's March 2003 status report http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.irq.un.transcript.blix/index.html, he notes something less than full and immediate cooperation and still a number of worrisome question marks they had - 5 months after Obama's "Nostradamus-like" prediction, which was 1 1/2 months before inspectors returned. Sorry, but Hussein still had his Al Samoud 2 missiles, so he wasn't completely without threat to his neighbors.
It's unclear who Obama, without security clearance, talked to to give him such confidence - certainly the NY Times with Judith Miller were more hawkish and pessimistic, and the intelligence services itself by no means gave Hussein a spotless recommendation. The Clintons were talking to Tony Blair, which in hindsight must have been the most disappointing, as I'm sure they didn't believe the 45 minutes nuclear threat, but to have intelligence so far off not just in the British and American sectors but other countries as well is rather astonishing. But what's the alternative to this intelligence - rumor and guessing, or inspectors on the ground? Obama went with the former, Hillary went with the latter - and neither had the power to change the course that Bush wanted, though the triangulation approach seemed to have slowed the rush to war for a few months at least to see what inspectors came up with.
March 2, 2008 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
IMO you're so far off on sooo many things. First, noone really cares whether we should've given Hussein all the chances in the world...the argument is whether it was wise to shift resources away from bin Laden to take out one of bin Laden's enemies (who, admittedly was no friend of ours...at the time). And hardness in foriegn policy is a lot more complicated than saying: "fuck him". Now, if you think differently, good on ya, go ahead and vote for McCain or Clinton. They'll tell ya exactly what you want to hear and you can go around telling everyone how tough America is as our strength in the world continues to crumble.
And Obama's opinion of what reaction we would get in Iraq and around the world didn't take a rocket science to figure out. A high school understanding of the Middle East should've told us all that...Shinsheki(sp?) knew it, he got fired for it. In the end, I have to ask, why did Clinton and just about everyone else think Wolfowitz was more qualified than Gen Shinsheki(again, sp?) to make this call?
March 2, 2008 9:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow.
If poll ratings were votes, Hillary would have been the candidate 3 months ago, Obama would have won New Hampshire and Romney or Huckabee would be representing the Republicans.
Yeah, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
It's this kind of hardness that the Democrats need if they're going to effectively represent seriousness in foreign policy.
You know what make seriousness in foreign policy? Listening to the intelligence community instead of cooking the books to push for war. Or how about listening to people like Scott Ritter who was telling everyone, prior to the invasion, exactly what they were going to find: Jack shit. See 'In Shifting Sands: The Truth About Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq.'
If 'seriousness' in foreign policy amounts to aping the GOP, then who needs it? You want seriousness in foreign policy? Read 'The Grand Chessboard' by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
If Obama seems oddly prescient to you in hindsight, maybe that's because he took seriously the fact that pushing the war in Iraq had been the central agenda of the PNAC for five years. I guess Hillary the letter that they sent to her husband in 1998 must have gotten lost somewhere in her mountain of experience.:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
Not that Obama was even cryptic about what he suspected the motivations were. He called Perle and Wolfowitz out by name in his now famous speech that everyone talks about, but no one seems to have actually read and digested.
But hey, just keep pretending that none of this happened, that none of the evidence was right there and that no one remembers what really happened. This is, after all, as Gore Vidal says, the United States of Amnesia.
March 2, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're penalizing Hillary for listening to the foreign intelligence community (not just the Richard Perle's).
Again, just because the neocons and Bush wanted this, doesn't mean it had to be completely wrong.
Here's Obama and Scott Ritter on the same topic:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/1/152953/8230/895/466943
Obama 10-26-02: "I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda"
Obama 10-26-02: "You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe
Scott Ritter: Facts needed before Iraq attack
17 July 2002
Scott Ritter: I believe Washington D.C. is using the concept of inspections as a political foil to justify war. America doesn't want the inspectors to return. The best way to stop war is to get the inspectors back in. I believe it should be the policy of the United Nations to get the inspectors back in.
Former U.N. Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter address the Iraqi Parliament
September 8, 2002
The only way that Iraq can achieve this (prevent war) is with the unconditional return of UN weapons inspectors, allowing such inspectors unfettered access to sites inside Iraq in order to complete the disarmament tasks as set forth in Security Council resolutions...
Sen Hillary Clinton 10-10-02: "While there is no perfect approach to this thorny dilemma, and while people of good faith and high intelligence can reach diametrically opposed conclusions, 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.
Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first and placing highest priority on a simple, clear requirement for unlimited inspections, I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.
If we get the resolution and Saddam does not comply, then we can attack him with far more support and legitimacy than we would have otherwise".
And then there was John Kerry and John Edwards who voted for the AUMF and somehow got everyone's vote in 2004:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/2/222450/4691
March 3, 2008 6:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's going to be a widening of the war in Iraq into Iran, but why actually read Kyl-Lieberman when you can just keep spewing Clinton talking points.
March 2, 2008 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Neither Hillary nor Obama voted on the torture ban, right?
On FISA amendment, once there was cloture, the bill was a done deal - passing with 75 votes or so. Stopping the FISA add-ons needed to be done in committee or via filibuster. Both Obama and Hillary came back to prevent cloture. That was where they expressed their opinion, though of course Dodd deserves all the credit for seriousness.
Hillary & Obama - joined at the hip on foreign policy votes - so why to think Obama would have been any different in the US Senate in 2002? Then he wouldn't have been just representing a safe liberal district, but the whole state, including more conservative suburbs and southern Illinois. Profiles in Courage? Methinks not.
March 2, 2008 3:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Des,
I would agree with you if his only statement was "I was against this war from the start" but it is the incredible detail and passionate belief as to WHY he was against it. It was almost Nostrodamus like in its accuracy:
"I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
"I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”
– Obama 2002
With that passionate held belief, had he been in the senate, and actually READ the NIE, he would have voted as many other dems voted - NO!
Unlike Hillary, he will not put our troops in harms way to prove his "tough on terror" stance.
She had some advice on this subject - her husband Bill: (which is probably why she didn't read it)
"Because military action probably will require only a few days, they believe the world community will quickly unite on rebuilding Iraq as soon as Saddam is deposed."
This is from the article Bill wrote in the Guardian Newspaper in Britain to convince the British people to "Trust Tony's Judgement" go to war in Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq3
So much for Hillary's "If I knew then what I know now" excuse. She puts way too much faith in other people's judgement. She does not use her own judgement, which is obvious in the way she has run her campaign so far. We want this person to "lead" our country? We already have a president who requires others to do the heavy thinking in the White House. Look how disasterous that has been.
March 2, 2008 3:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great article Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs Magazine. This is the leadership we need for America to regain its place in the world. Check it out. Cleared up all doubts for me on foreign policy.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html
March 2, 2008 3:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
A better speech at the time of the AUMF? Yeah I could see that. I especially liked the part on how she "casts this vote with conviction" and "putting the awesome responsibility in the hands of our president" part of the speech.
Ooooh yeah, that was a great speech she gave.
March 2, 2008 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, you mean the speech where she said it was the most difficult decision of her career? A decision which she made without even reading the NIE on Iraq?
You know, there's a guy who's been knocking around Washington for the last seven or so years who also doesn't think that what's in a NIE is relevant to this sort of decision... what's his name.. can't quite remember.. think he set up shop in the White House.. something about an Oval Office.. nuts. Maybe it'll come to me later.
March 2, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Des, Obama was not expressing an outlier position in the Democratic Party. In fact, the majority of Congressional Democrats voted against Bush's pre-emptive invasion of another country because Iraq posed no immediate threat to our country. Note two facts: Obama's position matched that of the majority of Congressional Democrats; these Democrats voted AGAINST the Bush War in Iraq.
The initial campaigns for the Democratic nomination were over-loaded with Democrats (from the Senate) who voted for this war mess. This was a MINORITY vote of the Congressional Democrats.
If you want courage at the time of this vote--it frankly goes to the Democrats who voted for this war. They went against the majority of their party to vote for a GOP war.
I see nothing to celebrate about Clinton's vote--or even that of Dodd or Biden or Edwards. It was poor judgment.
I refuse to reward that poor judgment that has led to the loss of life, limb, and livelihood for Americans and at a much higher level for Iraqis. This vote mattered; the judgment of the vote mattered; and Clinton got it completely and absolutely wrong.
Clinton is not the one I want answering the phone at 3 AM. Instead, I prefer Obama.
March 2, 2008 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary Clinton likes to claim "35 years of experience" versus Obama as "a first term Senator," and she says it so often you start to believe it, but he spent eight years in the Illinois legislature and three years in the US Senate. That's 11 years versus 7 in the US Senate for Hillary. Working in the state legislature is important. Legislatures must balance the budget, deal with crime, economic development and more. He is NOT just a great guy giving good speeches. Research him, visit his site before making up your mind about who to vote for.
March 2, 2008 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's easy to make the most important foreign policy decision of your Senate career without reading the NIE. For saying it was all about diplomacy when the name of the authorization was "Authorization to Use Force".
It was a shameful, pandering vote. I understand why there was so much shameful pandering going on at the time; but a full 30% of Americans knew it was b.s. and had sources to prove it. To defend it is just useless.
No, we don't know how a Senator Obama would have voted for sure. But everything he said would happen, did happen. Everything Hillary believed, turned out to be a lie with devastating consequences. And at least at the surface, to this day looking tough is more important to her than having a conscience about the horrors that vote have caused.
She'll be a poll-driven Commander-in-Chief, frighteningly too willing to engage this country in the sort of chest-thumping that has decimated America's standing in the world.
Without the Clinton name, she'd have nothing. I'm betting on the guy who did it himself. By that measure alone, he has more credibility than she'll ever have.
March 2, 2008 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hussein was contained. There was no justification for destroying a country, opening the door to Al Qaeda in Iraq, squandering blood and treasure of the American people, and leaving bin Laden free to roam the hills of Pakistan, and the Taliban to fluorish in Afghanistan.
She hasn't even been fully vetted, despite her protestations. She is incapable of taking responsiblity for her actions, believes the country owes her a coronation. I've had enough messiance delusions to last me a lifetime.
March 2, 2008 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary Clinton's claim of being ready on day 1 and of being ready to answer 3 am calls to the White House carry the unspoken implication that Bill Clinton would be on hand to help. Her staff was speechless on what makes her ready because they can't openly state the hidden message everyone hears behind her qualification claims. But we can't be at all sure that Bill will be there. His health could fail or their marriage could fail at any point. If she were nominated and Bill were removed from the equation between the nomination and the election, her case to voters of readiness would be weakened, probably fatally.
March 2, 2008 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
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