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So What Is This Guy's Beef With Hillary, Anyway?
Appalling confession time. Over the weekend, a maddeningly apolitical friend, having suddenly become aware that North Carolina's approaching primary could matter for the first time in her adult life, sought out my thoughts about Obama vs. Clinton. She asked me what my beef was with Hillary. Really. Aren't they pretty much the same in position and, if they are, doesn't it make sense to go for the one with the most experience?
Initially, I took the intellectually easy out. It was a two-premise question, so I went after the one that was easiest, the “more experienced” assumption, and did not address the “basically the same” assertion. I got done with that, and she pointed out that I hadn't actually told her what my beef was with Hillary. She wasn't trying to trap me into a confession that I was a sexist because, well, she's basically a recovering fundamentalist and her mind doesn't work that way. (At least I don't think so; but she's a sharpie, that one, so I tried not to say anything that would risk springing the trap if that was her game.)
The conversation moved on, and I never really answered the question because I realized that, in all the fighting over the last year, I'd almost forgotten why I didn't like her, why I knew years ago, back before Obama announced, that I'd have to support someone who would lose to her and then grit my teeth to punch the chad for her in the general. The truth is that, perhaps unlike others, my opposition to Hillary and my support of Barack come from very different places.
The reasons I support Obama are for another post. But, thinking through my opposition to Hillary, and about the things I've written about her here and elsewhere, I realized that, in a very real sense, my opposition to her is all about my uncle.
Drama warning: It gets a a tad tangential and emotionally manipulative from here. Proceed at your own risk.
My Dad was the youngest of ten. My poor grandmother churned 'em out as relentlessly as Stephen King turns out novels over the course of a quarter century. Six girls, four boys. Two of the boys, my Dad and one of his brothers, were military age when the U.S. Pacific Fleet went to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. My father joined the Marines the next month, was in the hellish Guadalcanal fighting from the start and fought for some other dots of sand and coral not really relevant to this story. He was gearing up with the rest of his division for an invasion of Kyushu that was turning into a disaster in the making before George Marshall's appalled eyes when Truman approved the use of the atomic bomb. (Don't ask me my opinion of that decision if you're convinced it was wrong. My perspective is colored by the the likelihood that I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been done.)
But, this wasn't about my Dad. It was about my uncle.
See, the thing is, my uncle was killed in Normandy a month after D-Day. He's buried there, in one of those cemeteries like the one you saw at the beginning of “Saving Private Ryan.” He was about 25.
I was born many years after the war, in the early 60s, a late child for my father. I grew up with this vast network of aunts and uncles and older cousins and absorbed the impact of his death upon them by osmosis. I know him only through the stories of my Dad and his siblings that revealed that impact on each of them. Understanding that impact was my first experience with coming to grips with the frailty and transience of life. I heard the stories of where they were when they found out he had been killed and what they felt. I visited the empty grave adjoining their own plots that my grandparents purchased. They erected a headstone for him over this empty grave, duly noting when he was born, when and where he died, his rank, and where he was buried, a place for my grandmother to leave flowers and flags and, I expect, to cry.
I heard the stories, too, about an aunt I never met, my dead uncle's young bride, who spent years in denial, hoping against hope that there had been some mistake, that he'd been wounded or captured or lost and he would come walking through the door some day to resume their interrupted life. None of my aunts or uncles, grandparents, cousins, or, of course, my Dad, questioned the meaning or purpose or necessity of my uncle's death. Hitler and Pearl Harbor were rather conclusive arguments and Americans were a pretty tough-minded lot in those days.
But none of them got over it. Ever.
Not me, of course. I never knew him and, as people do with complete strangers, never mourned his death. But my whole life, I observed the ripples his death made, the holes in peoples lives that never healed. As a child, I pondered the mystery of a man, not an old person at the end of their life, but a young who was there one day and then he wasn't. One minute a living, breathing, thinking person, like me, whole life before him, and the next he's a charred corpse in a foreign country and a painful echo that rang through the lives of a dozen people for decades thereafter.
I saw the impact on them, even decades later, and it has affected the way I've looked at every grave of a soldier I've ever seen, be it unknown Confederates in a mass grave at Petersburg or those of kids killed in Vietnam. My family's experience made me acutely, personally, aware that every soldier's death makes the same kind of holes in the hearts of other parents, spouses, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends. Every soldier's death, like every premature death, creates expanding concentric circles of grief, like a pebble into an inky pool. Some of that grief is experienced by people who will eventually be able to go on with their lives, and some of it by people who won't. But none of them will get completely over it. Ever.
I've read a lot of history in my time, including a lot of military history. I enjoy it immensely, but I always try to remember what those numbers in the books—so many thousand at Cannae, or Gettysburg or the Somme—really meant, because I know what it meant to my Dad's family. These were real people, with brains and heartbeats, dreams and aspirations, whose lives were cut short, not lines on a map or animated characters in a video game.
Some of you may have guessed what I think this has to do with Hillary.
In 2002, certain politicians who Hillary knew to be utterly unscrupulous, and not a little arrogant and stupid, began whipping the country up into war fever. As a result, she was presented with the most important decision a member of Congress has to face, a concurrent joint resolution called “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq.” A bill authorizing the myopic psychotic charlatans who ran the executive branch to start a war, in other words. She had no way of knowing that that war would turn into the debacle it did. However, she did know, with absolute certainty, that people would die. Maybe just hundreds, perhaps thousands.
Based on every available bit of evidence about what she did I have seen, based upon her words and demeanor at the time and what she's said since, and based upon her own long history of subordinating principle to her own ambition, I am convinced, beyond possibility of persuasion, that she voted for AUMFAI based solely upon her fear that it would be a quick, easy war and that she would be accused of being weak on defense when she ran for president if she opposed it. I do not believe, and will never believe, that the certain deaths even entered into the calculation. They were just hypothetical numbers on a page that she probably didn't read.
Most of the time, I'll give a politician, especially a legislator, a pass on making moral compromises, even self-interested ones. It's how democracies work. It has to be done in order for governments to function. But this was not a vote on a pork laden energy bill, or a tax credit for a company run by rotten bastards but that employs a lot of folks back in the district, or even a vote for an unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment to placate Red America's concern over that horrendous epidemic of flag burning.
No, this was a vote to start a goddamned war, an illegal, immoral preemptive war of aggression against a country that was not particularly in need of preempting at that time. And she did it solely because she feared being branded a weak woman by the Republicans when she ran for president, just as surely as Bill flew back to Arkansas to sign the death warrant for a severely retarded man to prove he wasn't a soft-on-crime lily-livered liberal.
There is no “greater good” that justifies that act, no ends that are justified by such means.
Four thousand families, wounded for life. Brothers, sisters, wives and husbands, parents and children. How many dead Iraqis? No one seems to know. Sixty thousand wounded Americans and sixty thousand families dealing with the consequences of those wounds. Three trillion dollars borrowed from China and flushed down the toilet for all the good its done anyone. She gets no passes, or understanding, for agreeing to that. And, frankly, if you haven't managed to convince yourself that she was really, truly terrified that Saddam would get the Bomb within the next three years and then slip it to Osama bin Ladin, I don't know how you can possibly be supporting her either.
And let's not forget the hundreds of thousands more who will come back physically whole but with their health damaged by stress hormones and with nightmares and emotional problems that will, to some degree, trouble them for the rest of their lives. People like my Dad, actually. I said it wasn't about him, but in a way it is, because, in a sense, he was as much as casualty of that war, a victim of what he did and what he saw, as his dead brother.
Like I said, I've read a little history, and there are two things I've learned about leaders. First, politicians rarely become better human beings as they get older. Second, the character of a politician who is capable of acquiescing in the deaths of others for no reason other than the advancement of his or her own ambition is never improved by the acquisition of additional power.
So that's my beef with Hillary, at its core. I certainly have other issues with her, and with Bill, but those are either less important to me than this one, reasons to be for someone else rather than to be against her, or related, in some way, to this one.
As a lesser evil than a Republican, at this critical point in our history, she's acceptable. Barely. But fortunately, I don't think that's going to be a decision I'll have to make.
Comments (140)
Already found my voting place for the NC primary.
April 10, 2008 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
NC, get ready for an onslaught of calls from Obama's grass-roots members who have been actively participating in his campaign's "Call" effort.
They'll be calling from all over.
April 10, 2008 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
NC - "Based on every available bit of evidence about what she did I have seen, based upon her words and demeanor at the time and what she's said since, and based upon her own long history of subordinating principle to her own ambition, I am convinced, beyond possibility of persuasion, that she voted for AUMFAI based solely upon her fear that it would be a quick, easy war and that she would be accused of being weak on defense when she ran for president if she opposed it."
Beautiful, if not long, sentence. That is exactly how I became convinced of these very same premises regarding her initial run for the Senate in New York. Why else would she have stayed married to Bill? As a woman making her own way in this world, that level of subordination of principle for ambition is simply unacceptable. It is all behavior based on fear. Fear that who she is won't measure up, or be taken seriously without her husband and his connections. No decent decision is ever made based from fear. The fact that thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died because of those decisions only goes to prove how negatively fear can manifest.
While you are preaching to the choir, I have to say my choir started a few songs earlier than yours.
April 10, 2008 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
An emotive story, to be sure.
"I am convinced, beyond possibility of persuasion, that she voted for AUMFAI based solely upon her fear that it would be a quick, easy war"
"beyond possibility of persuasion" is a sign that your hatred of Hillary is more religious dogma than rational response.
This thread clearly isn't the place to espouse an alternate point of view, where a vote for the *threat* of war can be a powerful diplomatic tool.
Nor is it the place to remind people that Colin Powell, who was highly respected and trusted back then, made the case domestically and internationally of the threat Saddam posed, and his possession of concrete evidence of Saddam's WMD programme.
Nor is it the place to remind people that Saddam slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Kurds and other Iraqis using gas WMDs, putting his crimes against humanity well above Milosevic, and close to Hitler.
Nor is it the place to remind people that Saddam was a warmongerer in the region, and had defied UN weapons inspectors to varying extents for more than a decade.
Things seem so crystal clear now, but it wasn't the case in 2002. I don't believe Hillary *wanted* a war with Iraq, but rather thought that the threat of war would finally lead to complete transparency from Saddam. If you say that the threat of war won't be carried through on, it doesn't make it a threat now does it? Had she been President, I don't believe war would have been waged so eagerly after the vote.
And I think she knew that if she didn't vote for the war, and Saddam killed hundreds of thousands more of his citizens, those souls would be on her conscience.
And I think she knew that Saddam would be an easy dictator to depose, with very low casualties - and indeed, he was toppled without difficulty - making the cost/benefit analysis of US lives to potentially thousands of innocent Iraqis persuasive.
Yes, Iraq has been a disaster, but it didn't have to be, and as such is an albatross that does not deserve to be hung around Hillary's neck. Her actions can, in my view, be explained by a rational assessment of the best course of action, rather than some of the hate-filled vitriol I see here.
I hope this Hillary-hate of yours is also directed to the 60% of Democratic senators who also voted for the Authorization for War, including Kerry and Edwards. And if all is forgiven them simply because of a politically expedient apology, then I despair. Hillary has been far braver, saying that with hindsight it was absolutely the wrong decision, but based on everything she knew at the time it was the best decision in a difficult situation. And for that honesty I commend her.
April 11, 2008 3:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, if only the Iraq War was about all those murdered Kurds...
Stop trying to obfuscate and utilize those innocents' deaths to justify your candidate's position. In hijacking the emotion of other people's deaths, you're debating using the same sort of tactics.
April 11, 2008 6:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, I'm giving a background to the monster that was Saddam, and why a rational person would want to remove him. What you're doing, and I suspect many people here, is equating Hillary's reasons for voting 'yes' with Bush's reasons for invading. That simply isn't fair, or true.
You're also blaming Hillary's 'yes' vote for the debacle that Iraq has become post-Saddam, even though it didn't have to be such a clusterf*ck post-Saddam.
The blame for what post-war Iraq has become can be laid in two places. The first, and most minor, place to lay blame is on Bush et al., for his phenomenal incompetence post-war.
The major portion of blame, however, belongs directly at the feet of the American people. There was a referendum on Bush's handling of the war in 2004, and on the Authorization for War vote itself, and Americans voted decisively in his favour. That was not Hillary's fault, or Biden's fault, or anyone else who voted pro-authorization. This clusterf*ck is your fault. Hillary's an easy scapegoat, but the reality is that Americans made their voices heard, and they were found lacking. Stop passing the buck.
April 11, 2008 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Even if a rational person would want to remove Saddam Hussein from power, it does not mean they have the legal or moral justification to do so.
April 11, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
So what your saying is, IF the war went well Congress deserved the credit for their judgment, but the war went bad, so Congress doesn't deserve the blame.
If Congress assumes no responsibility, why do we have a Legislative branch at all?
April 11, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think what foreigner may be saying is that at the time of the AUMF the situation was not as clear to everyone as it was to you and Barack Obama.
Many people who now support Obama were aware of and sickened by Hussein's persecution of the Shiites. Even Juan Cole, a staunch opponent of the occupation and an Obama supporter now, was conflicted to the point of tacitly endorsing the invasion. Professor Cole's 2004 brief to the US Senate predicted most of what ultimately went wrong with the occupation.
April 11, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
In answer to that Mr. Glad, please see my post below. That things might have been less than black and white is an absolutely unacceptable excuse.
This is the Oval Office we are talking about. We need someone who is able to do the right thing PRECISELY when things are "less clear."
April 11, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can call me Billy.
April 11, 2008 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Saddam was such a monster, why didn't Bill Clinton feel so compelled to remove him? Saddam played games with the inspectors during the Clonton presidency and Bill Clinton knew what a "monster" he was and yet believed containment was the best policy for dealing with Saddam. Since Hillary was his Co-President, she must not have thought he needed to be removed then either. Unless she really wanted to and argued for it behind the scenes a la NAFTA.
April 11, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
They used bombing and sanctions. Same things that brought genocide to an end in Kosovo without the loss of a single American life. They forced him to let the inspectors back in.
When I think of Clinton and the use of force, I remember Richard Clarke's story about Clinton agonizing over blowing up what he thought was a weapons lab in Somalia and saying tonight someone who is innocnet, maybe a janitor in that building, is going to die because I'm authorizing this strike.
April 11, 2008 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The other Senators who voted for the war did so for reasons just as venal as those described here, for others that are even more repugnant to me, or out of a deriliction of duty and a failure to become informed on the issue by reading the papers which was enough to determine that the president was lying. Their appologies will never absolve them of their crime but they at least give some clue that they might recognize the error of their ways. I will never support one of them over some one who oposed the war, but would support them over some one who is obsinate in their asertion that their vote was properly cast.
April 11, 2008 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, its a sign that I have given due consideration to all of your arguments about "threat of war for diplomatic purposes" and "no way of knowing it would be a disaster" and yada yada yada, compared them to my own clear recollection of the debate (and the coverage, which can still be found through the miracle if the Intertubes) and found them to be the lame-ass rationalizations of people who are engaging in Orwellian reality control and in response the cognitive dissonace they feel when they support her.
For Christ's sake it was only six years ago. No one with a brain, but no one, had the slightest doubt about what that vote was about at the time. No one, but no one, had the slightest doubt that once they had AUMFAI in hand, Bush and Cheney would engage in some shadow puppetry at the UN and then launch their war. That's how it was covered, that's how it was framed, that's what everyone understood.
Barack Obama understood that they were going to war and it would likely be a disaster. So did Al Gore. So did Bob Byrd in that impassioned and preceient floor speech he made. So did a lot of people.
As to the rest of the Democrats who fell into line to vote for it, no they get no slack from me. But none of them are running for President right now, are they? John Kerry and John Edwards made the exact same calculation and voted for the war for the same reasons Hillary did. Edwards' vote is slightly mitigated by what I think was his relative lack of foreign policy savvy at the time (the guy majored in textile technology at N.C. State, for cryin' out loud) and had he gotten the nomination, I might have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on his recantation. In Kerry's case, he, above all people, should have known better. It was an act of moral cowardice that, in hindsight, was typical of the flaws as a candidate that lost him the election.
Colin Powell? He let a lifetime of being a good soldier lead him into folly. I suspect he did what he did because he knew it was inevitable, that he couldn't stop it, and he wanted to try to keep a place at the table so there's be one person involved who wasn't batshit insane. It was a rationalization, and one he clearly regrets. Regardless, he burned through all of his respect and credibility and went into the red. He may manage to get back into the black before he dies. Doesn't matter to me right now because he's not running for president.
And no, I don't hate her. Disdain? Yes. Contempt? Yes. Anger? Yeppers. But hate I reserve for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all their war criminal accessories--Rumsfeld, Addington, Libby, Yoo, and the PNAC neocon crackpots who hatched this scheme.
April 11, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hope that hate is also levelled at the majority of Americans, who voted to continue Bush's war in 2004 (incidentally, I imagine Hillary did *not* vote for Bush in 2004).
Also, though this will probably fall on deaf ears, the argument of which you are convinced "beyond possibility of persuasion, that she voted for AUMFAI based solely upon her fear that it would be a quick, easy war"
is severely flawed. Read the following carefully.
If, as is implicit in your argument, she believed a "quick, easy war" was more likely than a long, drawn-out clusterf*ck of a war, then she was right to vote with conviction that war was the best option, as a quick, easy and successful toppling of Saddam would have been in almost everyone's best interests.
If, however, she thought that a clusterf*ck was more likely, then her "presidential ambition" would have precluded her from voted 'yes' for something that would come back to bite her in the ass.
Sorry, but by your own immutable argument, Hillary voted for, what was in her judgement, the best possible outcome in Iraq. Not out of fear or lack of consideration for lives.
April 11, 2008 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY
1)Saddam Hussein DID NOT attack the U.S.A.
THEREFORE: Justifying a vote for war on the basis of self-defense is UN-FUCKING-SOUND.
2)Saddam Hussein DID NOT possess the capability to attack the U.S.A.
THEREFORE:Justifying a vote for this war on the basis of preemptive self defense is UN-FUCKING-SOUND if it was ever logical in the first place, which it isn't.
Would you care to explain why justifying an all out invasion of any nation by the subjective judgment of a head of state is a defensible policy? Isn't that what invading because Saddam was a "Monster" boils down to?
Do you support invading China? Do you support removing Putin from power by force?
April 11, 2008 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
The people who supported the war were not memebers of the Senate. Senators are duty bound to be informed. The public is not. I do not hold it against my barber that he is illinformed on matters of national security. I do hold it aginst senators.
And you are wrong about even a quick and easy war. People die in war. The only justification for war is self defense or defense of others. Sadam was no longer a threat that justified war. If the war had gone well it would have been popular but still wrong. The war is not wrong because it lasted so long and cost so much. It is wrong because it was unjustified.
April 11, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the many reasons a lot of people supported the war was because people like Bill and Hillary Clinton, alleged leaders of the country, supported it. A great many more were confused about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, a relationship that the moral vacuum known as Bill Clinton (and I'm not talking about anything that's gone on below his neck, much less below his waist) sought to further confuse just a few weeks ago, in order to justify his wife's (and his own, since both were based on the same political calculation) support for Bush's war.
April 11, 2008 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, he didnt' need the vote to go to war. Were they going to stop him? NO. No one can argue that point.
April 11, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush isn't on the ballot, either in the primary or the general.
Al Gore spoke out against the war. Robert Byrd Spoke out against the war. Barbara Boxer spoke out against the war. Molly Ivins saw that vote for what it was. Paul Krugman. Jimmy Carter. George McGovern. Me. My Dad. My Mom. My brother and two sisters. My then seven year-old nephew. Whole bunch of people I know knew what was going on and knew it was wrong.
Hillary Clinton with her vote and both Clintons with their public presence, political position and standing in the minds of many Democrats, Americans and people around the world, gave their support to George W. Bush.
April 11, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just love thoughts like that. How the hell would you know?
April 11, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
and the necessary corollary:
The "great fighter" decided to just go along to get along?
Go Hillary.
April 11, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, basically, he was the dictator of the country and their job was to rubberstamp his decisions like the Reichstag or the Supreme Soviet?
April 11, 2008 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The real scary thought is, the 2002 AUMFAI was political Kabuki theater.
Bush, right now legal authority to basically launch a war (i.e. military operations) anytime, anywhere in the world, even on U.S. soil, on his say-so alone and Congress gave him permission to do so, and they did so before the October 2002 AUMFAI vote.
April 11, 2008 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
This excuse is absolutely unacceptable.
What if her choice as our Chief Executive is between the politically easy thing to do and the RIGHT thing to do?
I demand a president that will do the right thing ESPECIALLY when the path of integrity is not crystal clear.
April 11, 2008 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed, Foreigner. I'd like to add that the legislative branch was given "cooked books" by the executive branch. The intelligence estimates were all shaded to produce the results the neocons wanted to justify their casus belli. In fact, I recall that Rumsfeld and Cheney weren't satisfied with the intelligence reports they were getting from the Pentagon and the State Department's professionals so they brought in their own "experts" to produce alternative briefings. One of the big issues was whether there was a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime. Cheney and the neocons were sure such a working relationship existed. The intelligence community could not say with certainty that there was one. So, the administration disregarded the intelligence establishment and went out and found others who would tell them what they wanted to hear. Then, they passed that version on to Congress. This, and so many other neocon "facts" were force-fed to Senators and those who dared try to slow the stampede were threatened with various epithets, "unpatriotic" probably being the least of them.
I don't think it was a matter of cold blooded political calculation that caused so many normally thoughtful Senators to vote for the authorization. Nor do I believe many who voted for the authorization thought Bush would use it immediately to launch a preemptive strike. Viewed in a certain way, the authorization was simply a procedural tool given to the administration so it could demonstrate just how united the Americans were in dealing with Saddam and the weapons inspectors. Many Americans didn't see war as the inevitable consequence of the authorization.
That's what we were working with, back then. Wrong information based on faulty intelligence led Congress to vote in favor of an authorization that authorized the use of force but was not a declaration of war. Clinton and many other legislators may be given a pass on their votes.
However, now that we have the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the authorization to use force in Iraq as shining examples of two times when congress was deceived into giving the executive branch power it didn't deserve, it should be a cold day in hell before another resolution or authorization is ever approved again. Maybe 2060 or beyond. After all of our voices are silenced.
April 11, 2008 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Beautiful, if not long, sentence. That is exactly how I became convinced of these very same premises regarding her initial run for the Senate in New York. Why else would she have stayed married to Bill? As a woman making her own way in this world, that level of subordination of principle for ambition is simply unacceptable. It is all behavior based on fear. Fear that who she is won't measure up, or be taken seriously without her husband and his connections. No decent decision is ever made based from fear. The fact that thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died because of those decisions only goes to prove how negatively fear can manifest."
Just love thoughts like that. How the hell would you know? Are you part of the marriage? I know we all think we are cause everyone has an F'in opinion about it but come on. Fearful? Ever though that she actually stayed with him cause she loves him and wants to be part of his life? And vice-versa.
April 11, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having sex with the intern is a damn funny way to show you love your wife, so I am not really willing to give you the "vice versa" part.
April 11, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree wholeheartedly for exactly the same reason if for no other.
"How many dead Iraqis?"
I couldn't begin to guess, but I can imagine that the pain and emptiness of each loss is felt just as deeply as the loss of a U.S. soldier here at home.
This is the part that concerns me the most, children will grow up without fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles. The latter will spend a lifetime mourning the loss of children, and I think the chaos of war is deferring the emotional reaction in terms of sentiment towards the U.S and perhaps in 'democracy' itself. Speaking hypothetically, if Iraq is experience democracy - as an Iraqi, I'd say 'keep it'.
I think one of the biggest crimes of the Bush administration was the failure to count the Iraqi dead... I mean, wasn't that the least they could do? The dehumanization of the Iraqi people after exploiting their plight to justify an invasion is the epitome of evil in my opinion.
April 11, 2008 12:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. I am tremendously depressed over the many young Americans killed in the Iraq War. But I can't even describe how I feel about the Iraqi deaths.
The United States killed a nation. We (and I use that loosely, as clearly the majority of us had not a thing to do with it) have killed an entire generation of Iraqis, and destroyed thousands of families.
I remember a newscast about two years ago suggesting that the Iraqi death toll might be at least 700,000. I don't know any Iraqis, and never would have known any of those people. But I cried. Very hard.
But things keep turning as usual here in the US - and people crazily support politicians who will continue this madness. It's enough to push one to alcoholism.
April 11, 2008 6:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Lest anyone should doubt, Bill Clinton's own words confirm that he knew:
a. The Neocons were not to be trusted.
b. That he believed victory would be swift and that public opinion would then be supportive.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,916233,00.html
A couple of months ago I penned about Clinton's column:
She triangulated.
April 11, 2008 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Witty1,
Another of their indefensible tactics is not to show the bodies of our soldiers killed in action when they arrive back in the states. Makes it easier to ignore the realities of war.
Disgraceful.
Well said, NC.
April 11, 2008 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Fury of Aerial Bombardment
You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.
You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies.
Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?
Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.
Richard Eberhart in Understanding Poetry
I am quoting this for the reference to "names on a list" which is most people's knowledge of soldiers killed in war. Much ceremony is given over to the tomb of the "unknown" soldier, when in fact the "known" dead are just names on a list.
I'm struck too by the reference to Cain in the context of aerial bombardment. Presidential candidate Mac Cain (meaning, Cain's offspring) began his political career as a pilot inflicting devastating pain on helpless civilians.
You would think the fury of aerial bombardment would rouse God to relent, it says.
April 11, 2008 1:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
April 11, 2008 2:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
If anyone needs some reminding - you can watch the 'Newshour' on PBS - every night - if they have the full details, they honor the fallen in silence at the end of the program.
Some other people here got pissed when I referred to her as 'The Iraq Whore', but to me - that is exactly what she is. Bush and Co are even bigger whores than her - but she is indeed a whore none the less.
Her valuation of a human life, of a brave American in the service of their country, was again displayed as she exaggerated the Bosnia landing. Just like the war vote - she still has not apologized for that either. Rather she just spews excuses and rationalizations that further insult our intelligence.
Both the officers in charge of the airfield, and the pilot of her plane that day took great offense on behalf of those who were serving there when she tried her weaseling little ploy.
April 11, 2008 1:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
That not one Obama supporter here calls you on your language shows how acceptable sexism and sexist language is among the Obamaphiles. Anything goes if it's ant-Clinton. That you then spread the word whore to BushCo does not obscure the essential misogyny that is the heart of your post. Like I have said hundreds of times, the most worrisome thing about Obama is the folks that support him.
April 11, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, I totally disagree, in this particular instance. The noun "whore," the gerend "whoring" and the verb "to whore" are essential words to the vocabulary of political discourse because much it is so very descriptive of so much what what many polticians do. If you want to be polite, you can use the noun and verbal forms of "prostitute," but I don't think the metaphor itself can be dispensed with.
So, please explain the rules to me here to avoid the risk of being convicted of sexism (i.e. the belief that my gender is inherently superior and that persons of the other gender should be subjegated) based just on my word selection, because I'm really confused. If politician X trades a vote to an oil company in exchange for campaign contributions, am I allowed to call X a whore if he's a man, but not if she's a woman? Am I only allowed to apply the metaphor for a politician of either gender if I'm a woman? Or am I just forbidden to use the metaphor at all, no matter how apt and no matter what my gender, because it's root meaning applies to an economic activity mostly (but not exclusively) engaged in by oppressed, and often brutalized, women, and is thus offensive to the entire human race?
April 11, 2008 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's such an inexact term, Steve. Surely you can find another word.
April 11, 2008 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The usage brings to mind one of the first prominent liberal blogs, now defunct, mediawhores or the horse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Whores_Online
Here, the reference was to our sold out media, and is commonly used for politicians. Yet now, because it's Hillary who is the target, suddenly, the usage of the word is taboo.
April 11, 2008 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glad you figured that out, AdAbsurdum. "The media," as you know, is not an individual. Big difference.
April 11, 2008 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Words can be a real problem. I've gone round and round with Josh over his "bitch slap theory" of politics to no avail. He doesn't use it anymore, but he still quotes people who do.
April 11, 2008 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I watch Stephanopolous every week when he does the 'in memoriam' segment... I pause at each page of listed dead service people and read the names, ages and hometown of each one aloud. I feel compelled to bear some kind of witness to their deaths.
April 11, 2008 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
This whole commander in chief argument falls short in my opinion.
McCain is given credit for his service in the Navy, but no one asks why Hillary never enlisted and served in any capacity.
Not that I think military service should be a qualification to be president one way or the other, but wouldn't true equality ask Clinton about HER lack of military service too?
The idea that only a man can evade his duty (draft dodging, not enlisting) doesn't really illustrate equality between the sexes.
Somehow she can attack Obama for not having crossed that 'threshold' insinuates that had he joined the military at some point in his life he would have crossed the CIC threshold. But doesn't measure her by the same criteria.
April 11, 2008 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
My big beef begins with the AUMF as well, but it was my kids that made the numbers real to me.
I was in the National Guard when this vote came up, and I knew damn well that the Reserve Component was heading out in heavy numbers.
I knew because they were already training for it, and if I knew, She knew. Or she should have, hade she done her job.
I also knew that anyone who could vote to authorize keeping families like mine apart for a war with no reasonable justification was either a sociopath, an imbecile, or a coward. Period.
I said then that I wouldn't vote for her. Obviously, McCain is more of a sociopath, imbecile, and coward than she is, so I can't say what I'll do if she gets some kind of miracle (probably move to Norway.)
April 11, 2008 3:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
No snark intended here. What did they tell you about what you might have to do when you joined the Guard? Is the story that you'll just be providing domestic security? I think the Guard and the Reserves have really been fucked over by the occupation, but I'm not sure that the invasion went beyond what should be expected of them. I'm not clear on what happened in Desert Storm. I know one Reserve unit in al Jabal I think took a big hit from a scud right at the end of the war, but I don't know if any Guard units went or not.
April 11, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Billy,
First off, I appreciate you're sacrifice as the parent of a Marine. Though I'm militant on my opposition to the war, it was my honor to serve with the people I did, and I'm well aware of the debt I owe to the men and women who have sacrificed much more than I.
Second, No snark taken. As far as I'm concerned, I knew that I had signed up to do anything at any time that the DOD "needed" me to do. So technically, yes, Reserve Component GIs are within the expectations of their "oath."
That's really disingenuous technicality, though. I think when you consider Abu Ghraib, stop-loss, back to back deployments, the DOD systematically fucking people over post war Vet care, DOD looking the other way when female soldiers are raped, and a whole host of other issue, ALL of the troops are getting fucked.
April 11, 2008 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Her vote on the war removed the scales frm my eyes and let me see her for what she was. I had thought her legion of haters were unfairly pillorying her but they were the perceptive ones and we her defenders were the fools. She is every bit as craven as they claimed.
April 11, 2008 7:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amen to that. I would have voted for her, but I would have done it knowing that, for all her empty promises, the person I was voting for would hardly be an improvement over McCain.
April 11, 2008 8:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
We are looking backward. What is important is what Hillary thinks about Iran. Did she learn from her AUMF vote? I don't think so.
From the JedReport:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZL33nPoEU
Scary isn't it?
April 11, 2008 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why not just tell her the truth? Like most Obama supporters you are a sexist pig and you think women are f*cking wh*res.
I mean Obama has done NOTHING to stop the war and voted many times to keep funding the war since he arrived in the senate.
April 11, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
dembillc -
I'll ask you again, what is it you wish to accomplish with these types of posts?
Are you trying to divide the party further? Are you a Republican troll who wants McCain to win?
Most Obama supporters would vote for Hillary against McCain, including the OP, so no, we are NOT sexist. That's like saying most Hillary supporters are racists, which is equally wrong.
And please quit repeating the disgusting quote of a radio hack job as some sort of evidence that Obama supporters are morally deficient. I don't agree with any hate language, from either side.
April 11, 2008 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry SCMadden, Obama supporters are forever stained by the cheering throng Obamanating to the F*cking Wh*ore chant. Just imagine a crowd of Hillary supporters cheering on of of them using the N word to describe Obama and you will see how it feels. Your fellow Obama supporters are scumbags and it reflects directly on you.
April 11, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Your fellow Obama supporters are scumbags and it reflects directly on you."
Why? Why do you feel that a group of supporters and the vile and inappropriate actions they participated in should reflect on all the supporters out there?
I would be the first to say that there are many obnoxious and apallling Obama supporters. Even those that are just enthusiastic can be relentlessly annoying. Small children often generalize the behavior of one to the behavior of all those like them. One of my children was nipped by a puppy, and was terrified of dogs for years. She thought all dogs bite.
Adults are presumed to have outgrown this process, and usually recognize that it is unfair to hold people responsible for things they cannot control. My wife supports Obama, but was disgusted by the "....whore" comment. Why should she be judged for their behavior?
April 11, 2008 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dembillc: It's always difficult to judge an individual based on the comments they choose to make. I imagine you can't be quite as shallow and sad as your comments suggest. Or, at least, I hope you aren't.
April 11, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your username contradicts your accusations of sexism. Why not "demHillc"? You just want Bill back.
Wish we had ratings to ditch this kind of crud.
April 11, 2008 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh? How about a wall of shame? You can do that with the tools available. Just open a Wall Of Shame post and put names and accusations up there any time you find someone not conforming to echo chamber thought.
April 11, 2008 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whore rhymes with war, Bush is a whore, Wal-mart is Whore-Mart, I call Best Buy and other stores like them 'Whore Stores'. Electronics retailers notoriously sell for the spiff, ask any computer person who really knows their stuff. You cannot excuse the rationale I have heard some salespeople (who may not personally have known better but were brainwashed by managers and training) for people I have accompanied for buying an inferior product at higher money than the better and actually less expensive product. Ergo - Whore Stores. What gets the manager his/her spiff?
Clinton went for the Spiff.
April 11, 2008 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally agree with you, but let me play Devil's Advocate:
Did you oppose John Edwards and other Democrats who voted for the war for the same reason?
Or, was it Hillary's lack of apology, or any sense that she regretted her vote that made up your mind?
April 11, 2008 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
To me, her lack of expression of regret is irrelevant given what I believe to be her rationale for the vote. "Gee, I'm sorry I voted for a what I thought would be a short victorious war because I wanted to look tough now that it's turned into a complete clusterf**k?" No. Doesn't get it done.
Edwards, had I been forced to do so, I might have given the benefit of the doubt because I can see an inexperienced politician with no previous background or interest in politics or history, might have been pursuaded by the bogus intelligence and rushed to judgment by the fearmongering. Based on that, I might (emphasis on might) also have been able to credit his apology as a sign that he understood where he had gone wrong and learned from it, rather than just writing it off to expedience.
As to Kerry, it's like I said in response to Foreigner above. Kerry's vote for the war was, if anything, more unforgivable than Hillary's, but in 2004, the urgency of the need to get GWB out of the White House and staunch the damage overrode my moral qualms. And if I had any doubts about that, Nader's reentry into the race provided a valuable object lesson on the perils and limits of moral purity. As I said in my post, it's a lesson I'm willing to put into effect if Hillary manages to steal the nomination. (Though, as I've said elsewhere, I think it will be futile as Hillary can only win the nomination by means that will ensure her defeat in the general.)
It was, in fact, my distress over Kerry and Edwards' Iraq votes that kept me out of the primaries in '04. I knew that Dean would have been a stronger candidate precisely because he was best positioned to taken on Bush for being an abject failure as a War Prez'dent, but Dean was running version 1.0 of the 21st century campaign and it was doomed to fail. He was bound to make fatal mistakes because he had no one else's mistakes to learn from.
April 11, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
HA! So because we wanted him out in 2004 Kerry's vote was ok. You've just lost your own argument...later dude
April 11, 2008 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the choice is between bad and worse, I'll go with bad. If my choice is bad and better, I'll go with better. What is so hard for you about that?
April 11, 2008 1:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry. What did you say the difference between Kerry and Clinton on the invasion was? Other than the fact that she was able to look all the way forward to 2008 when she would be running for President when she voted for it and he was already running for President when he voted for it. And the other 73 or so Senators who voted for the AUMF were motivated by? And the 85% of the American people who favored the AUMF were motivated by?
I think you've lost your way here, Steve.
April 11, 2008 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think he's saying that in 2004 it was between Kerry and Bush, and therefore Kerry was better. After all, the war was actually Bush's idea.
--Choice between bad and worse--
Now, it is between Hillary and Barack. He considers Barack to be a good choice, but if the choice was Bush/Clinton, or McCain/Clinton, obviously Bush/McCain would be worse.
His response doesn't negate any of his points. Unless you want it to.
April 11, 2008 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, your choice is to be informed. What's so hard for you about that? What's best is to be informed while making an emotional choice.
April 11, 2008 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suppose Hillary wasn't required to be informed by reading the NIE BEFORE voting for the war.
April 11, 2008 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well said NC (or Commentator formerly known as NCSteve)
My father-in-law is also a WWII Veteran, and his brother (his only brother) also died in the war and is buried at Normandy. I agree with your point that a hole is left in the family - even though none of us knew him other than my father-in-law.
The Vietnam war was hard on my FIL - he suffered flashbacks and PTSD due to the experiences he'd had. The Iraq war is causing the same thing for him - nightmares, extreme stress, emotional upset...
I would imagine many other WWII vets (those who survive), Korean War vets and Vietnam vets are also suffering.
Like you, I'll hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton if I have to. But I was one of many Marylanders who voted Obama in our primary, and hope to do so in the general as well.
Now - I think I'm going to go call my Father in Law, just to remind him that I love him.
April 11, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
You write beautifully, NCSteve.
Clinton, like other senators, voted in favor of the AUMF because it was politically expedient. No ifs, ands, or buts. How else might this candidate screw the country as president?
Significantly less than John McCain, but what an unappetizing choice if it comes to that.
April 11, 2008 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
NC - Great post, it reminded me of the most important reason for not supporting Clinton in this election. It was clear to almost everyone that the AUMF was a vote to go to war - it certainly should have been crystal clear to anyone with the savvy and experience that Hillary Clinton wishes to claim as hers. It is also the reason (SC) that I had reservations about Edwards, though he at least apologized.
My mother landed in Normandy with a field hospital on D+3 (my father with a rifle platoon on D+90). As the daughter of a suffragette, she has been a feminist for all of her long life but will be voting for Obama in the NC primary (as will I) for precisely this reason.
And, dembillc, voting to continue to fund the war when there is ample reason to believe that a belligerent President would punish defunding by the Dems by punishing the troops is VERY different and far less coldbloodedly calculating than voting to go to war in the first place.
April 11, 2008 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
For me it is the vote for the war, the push for a flag burning amendment and the blaming of all our problems video games and rap lyrics.
That just does not fit with what I want out of a president. I don't give a damn about irrelevant stands and she's a past master at those.
April 11, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant post.
This is the fundamental reason why Hillary Clinton's nomination as a democrat would impact my confidence in our ability to actually solve some fairly significant problems as quickly as we need to over the next few decades.
I was similarly disgusted with every democrat who voted for this war yet didn't bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, but at least most had the decency to regret their decision and say so unequivocally. Hillary has yet to really do that.
I am quite certain I won't have to move to Vancouver anytime soon, though, and will be able to enjoy a front-row seat as Obama leads us toward an American Renaissance. I have faith that enough Americans see the possibilities through the spin.
I would vote for Hillary over McCain with an enormous amount of regret. I would then do my level best to shove her administration to the left by not going back to sleep and making her deliver on her platform.
Still, no matter who is elected in November, the challenge remains the same for the electorate:
Can we finally stay personally engaged in the political process and force our representatives to finally start representing us?
I, for one, won't be going back to sleep until this nightmare is over, and I am not just talking about Baby Bush. We are at a point in history that we can finally deliver on the promises made by the Founding Fathers more than 200 years ago. We can do it just when we can't afford to wait one more minute. The only way to tackle our enormous problems is through unity. This divided country has been exploited for too long by nefarious sociopaths and narcissistic, would-be nobility.
A large portion of us have finally stirred from our high-fructose slumber and looked beyond our bloated credit cards to see the wasteland that Bush and Clinton and Reagan policies have wrought. That is why Barack has done so well. He sees this fundamental truth as well, lived it during his early career in Chicago, and explains it so many people finally "get" in a way that has been missing from mass market politics since at least 1968.
It is our choice this year.
Do we turn boldly into the future and impose drastic solutions on ourselves as a way to force us into a massive course change or do we throw up our hands in defeat because it is too hard, too late, too something that some can't seem to get past.
I am optimistic enough to think that most of us will choose the course of destiny over the course of ruin and that all of us will then get to that City on a Hill.
April 11, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks NC, those are my sentiments exactly (minus the personal experience part).
It's also worth pointing out that Hillary, like many other senators who voted for the war resolution, didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate the Senate was provided with. This fact makes it very difficult for her supporters to make a convincing case that her vote was simply an error in judgment made in good faith--if she was making the best judgment she could on the evidence she had, why didn't she bother to read the complete evidence?
April 11, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
wonderful post. one of the best i've read in cafe talk.
i would like to add on a thought. i think we have to remember that the democratic nominee who becomes president will be the leader of our party. for a number of decades our nation has taken some backward steps regarding social justice and our role on the international stage. i am heartened by the prospect that sen. obama presents a fresh conceptualization of the problems we face ("fresh" as in we don't usually see it on the national stage with such overwhelming support). i think sen. obama is not only what our country needs, but precisely what this party needs.
hillary clinton, although a politically brilliant person, is a facsimile of what the democratic party used to be, and i am personally tired of it (even though i am relatively young).
if sen. obama is successful (if he becomes president) then i believe it bodes well for this nation, for this planet, and the party as well.
April 11, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly.
April 11, 2008 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Formerly Known... That all does seem to be a more weighty point than Tuzla or her weird laughing fits.
Back when it was "inevitable" she'd be the nominee, I was hoping she would give a sincere talk about why she was wrong. She never did. She did say at that debate (was it the last one?) that it was a vote she'd like to take back. But did she ever show she knew she was wrong?
It was insanity, at the time, to think that we HAD to invade a country that had done no harm to us, when we still had another country that we'd invaded to deal with, when the actual culprit of 9/11 was still on the loose. Only a neocon fool or a political coward would've gone along with that mess.
April 11, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
It was insanity, only a coward would have gone along with it, and most of our Senators did, which was disgraceful. The Democratic Party did nothing on foreign policy that it should have until Kerry's critique of Bush in the first debate in 2004. It was great to hear that, wish we had heard that critique in 2001 when some of us felt that way already. The 2001-2004 era is reminiscent of McCarthy in the cravenness of the left and its passive acquiescence in evil. We can't headshoot all those who complied, which would throw out the progressive baby (no, not Allsburg) with the bathwater, but we can't forget either. Not for a minute.
April 11, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
A couple of other points I should make clear. I do not blame Hillary for the scale of the disaster in Iraq. That was strictly an executive branch project. I do blame her for subordinating principle to ambition on an issue of life or death. It's both unforgivable morally and illustrative of the lack of strategic vision that's made her such an abject failure even judged by the standards of an amoral Machivellian political operator.
I concede that if you truly believe her real concern was for saving the Iraqis from the ravages of Saddam's murderous regime (and from the worse reign of terror his psychotic sons would have almost certainly unleashed if they had succeeded him), it is morally defensible to give her a pass. I have seen no convincing evidence of that from her contemporaneous statements, but whatever. But, if that's the case, we're back to the judgment question again, aren't we?
Here are the two central truths of war: First, war is the process of converting order to chaos and what new order emerges from that chaos cannot be foreseen or controlled by the governments waging the war. Second, as Robert Wilson Lynd said, "The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."
I don't think its asking too much to expect your presidential candidate to understand this, and to get that, morality aside, that's why you do not fight wars of choice. History is littered with fools who acted based on "dangerous illusion." The Austrians were expecting a short victorious war when they invaded Serbia in 1914. Both the Union and the Confederacy were expecting one in 1861. Hitler expected one when he invaded Poland. Britain expected one when it started the Boer War.
And even on the rare occaisions when a country has managed to pull off a short victorious war, the victory has usually proven to be a disaster for the victor in the long run. Bismarck pulled off three short victorious wars and only one of them ended up being a complete disaster for his country. His record of success is unequaled in history.
Obama understood this as a state legislator in 2002. Hillary doesn't appear to understand it even to this day.
That's that judgment thing we keep talking about and it applies to everything a president does.
April 11, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Beautiful post. Beautiful understanding of how the actions of politicians impacts us all, how the loss of one ripples through the future.
I quite agree with your rationale. And to those who make the argument "she couldn't have known," I say BULLSHIT!
There were plenty of us who knew. We knew Bush was lying. We knew this war would be a disaster. People knew. The evidence was available to those who wanted to find it. But the atmosphere of the time was poisonous. Those who dared to speak against the war were called traitors. Have people forgotten the cries of "treason!" that went out from every corner of Bush Incorporated? Have people forgotten how the atmosphere of you're either "for us or agin us" that reigned supreme?
It took courage to oppose the war in 2002/2003. Most of our "leaders" showed no courage. They took the easy way, blind to the consequences of their actions. There are none so blind as those who would not see.
April 11, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
"If, as is implicit in your argument, she believed a "quick, easy war" was more likely than a long, drawn-out clusterf*ck of a war, then she was right to vote with conviction that war was the best option, as a quick, easy and successful toppling of Saddam would have been in almost everyone's best interests."
This is perhaps the most dangerous and thoughtless statement I have seen in my several months of reading TPM sites. The truth is that war is by definition (and NC, your post is as good as all of your stuff but your thoughts on this point just above an including the definition I speak of is perhaps even better) is NEVER "quick and easy" and for my money anyone that can utter this phrase without disabling moral pain has no business in public life let alone in the White House!
Many, many of us saw this for what it was and still see it for what it is - simple US imperialism. Any other view denies our reality and our history and until we come to grips with these we will continue to cause unspeakable damage to humanity (not to the world -- it couldn't care less about the activities of humanity and will likely exist long after we are gone).
April 11, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post NCSteve.
I have to say my near visceral dislike for Hillary comes from a similar angle: my experience in the First Gulf War.
I vividly recall, just a day or so after the ground war stopped but before we knew whether we were going to go on to Baghdad, thinking that if we went to Baghdad, I'd be walking foot patrols there while snipers shot at us, and if I got out alive, it wouldn't be for another 4 or 5 years. And that was as a grunt in a foxhole, almost 20 years ago. So when any politician who voted for the AUMF says they were fooled and didn't know what would happen, I just can't believe that I could see it coming from that foxhole almost 20 years in the past and they didn't know exactly what they were doing on Capitol Hill 5 years ago: sending troops off to maim and be maimed, to kill and be killed, all to protect their own political careers.
April 11, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for your service.
April 11, 2008 12:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for saying that; you're very welcome.
It's the troops coming home from our present wars that will need all of our support. And they'll need it for many, many years to come as they deal with the physical and mental trauma of urban warfare.
So please, everyone, remember in the years to come to keep an eye on VA issues, particularly if one of your Senators or Representatives happens to be on one of the commitees for Veterans Affairs.
http://www.senate.gov/~svac/public/index.cfm
http://veterans.house.gov/
April 11, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting. My son was with the 2nd Marine Division up to Kuwait City. He never got to fire his rifle. Everyone he saw was dead or surrendering. Most of the prisoners were wearing those nic nic shirts, polyester with construction scenes printed on them and street shoes, like they'd been rounded up out a disco or something and sent to the front to fight Marines with meat tags. He tells me the movie Jarhead pretty well captures his experience of Desert Storm. Guess different people saw different things. Some of the videos our troops post to YouTube convey a different view of Iraq than you get around here.
People are beginning to understand that the invasion and the occupation are two different things.
April 11, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
My regards to your son. Though when I was completing AIT at Ft. Sill, we did get into some dust-ups with Marines that came in for artillery training; as I recall we lost more of those than we won.
I was Regular Army in an artillery unit in the 3rd Armored Division so although we weren't firing our rifles we put a lot of rounds down range starting even before the air war. We were fighting with the 1st Cav prior to the ground war doing artillery raids (shoot and scoot) at Iraqi AA-A and radar units in preparation for the air war.
During the breaching operation of the Iraqi frontlines my unit was attached to the 1st ID. And during the groundwar we provided artillery support for forward elements of our division, the 3rd AD. We were at the battle of 73 Easting, providing artillery support to the Cav Scouts that were going toe-to-toe with armored Republican Guard divisions, with the Cav Scouts calling artillery to within a couple hundred meters of their positions.
All the Iraqis I saw (both dead and alive) were either conscripts or Republican Guard. All were in uniform. The conscripts gave up in droves (whom we later had to help the MPs provide medical attention for), the RGs fought pretty hard, but from what I've read of others' accounts, our operating areas had some of the stiffest resistance.
Jarhead was interesting and closer than Three Kings but didn't capture the scale of destruction I saw, though it did capture the surreal absurdity. You're right the war and the occupation are two different things and it's a pity the Bush administration was able to conflate the two in so many people's minds.
April 11, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Never 'got' to fire his weapon? Oh, Billy! You've gone down in my opinion. I was relived when people close to me never 'got' to fire their weapon.
April 11, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was actually expecting that kind of response. It is what it is. I don't think he was the only Marine in the 2nd Marine Division to feel that way. I was drafted in 1963, and, after being shuffled around some, ended up in Germany, where, outside of training exercises, the most dangerous things I faced were flying beer mugs in bars.
The point to the exchange is the nature of the invasion v. the occupation. Maybe at another time we can talk about who it was in the Bush administration who favored an occupation and who didn't. Believe it or not, it didn't have to be that way.
April 11, 2008 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank YOU, sir, for your service.
April 11, 2008 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, I think we've been around this block before. Still, putting all 4000 on her? Thats a pretty steep hill to climb. I suppose that would mean you were a Dean supporter to the end in 2004? Or, didn't even vote for Kerry? What would be worse than be a Veteran and vote for a war that you "knew" was wrong?
Think I've said it before and I will say it again. Bush was going to war. With or without Congress. It was a symbolic vote that meant nothing. Congress wasn't going to take him to court over War Powers.
I respect your choice even if I don't agree with them. I do, though, would love to see more posts from Obama supporters on why they are for him rather than against her. Usually it runs heavy on why your against her.
April 11, 2008 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Honestly, Louisville, I believe the reason they are so virulent in the anti-Clinton hatred is that they don't have policy reasons to support him. Health care, stimulus, mortgage crisis, trade, China, Iran, education, higher ed, and the list goes on, her policies are better. Even on Iraq, their current policies are similar. He's better on her on immigration and prison reform. So, if you don't have a policy leg to stand on, you have to make it about personality.
He wins hands down on personality. She's not charming, she's a work horse. He's cool personified. I recognize his charisma, it's powerful.
He also offers a new politic, but you know, I don't want to get all fuzzy-cuddly with the Republicans. He thinks we have been too partisan and I think we haven't been partisan enough - so for me, what is his main appeal to many people is the number one reason for hoping against hope that folks will wake up and she will sweep the final primaries. I doubt it, it's Bush v Gore again, the cool kid versus the gradegrubber. So, he will win. I will vote for him and wish just once that we could have an election over competence and issues and policies instead of personalities
just once.
April 11, 2008 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're wrong. I support Senator Obama on the Iraq policy outlined in this article:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_obama_doctrine
If anyone can point me to a similar examination of Senator Clinton's team and their strategy for Iraq, foreign policy, and kicking republican ass on both issues, I'll be happy to compare the two and reconsider my support.
April 11, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reconsider your support? Please. Just make your case. I doubt anyone is interested in having you reconsider your support. Never happen.
April 11, 2008 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Probably not. Point conceded.
But I'm still interested in hearing what her team's plan is for taking on the traitors. Can you help me?
April 11, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
How about her pathetic whining - woe is me that helped cause THOUSANDS of deaths and injuries?
The dodging of truth, now and in the 90's
The refusal to accept responsibility NOW.
The constant moving of goal posts and then denying she had the prior ones.
I'm not going to be polite about this - she lies, she has been a liar before, she did not oppose the war.
I'm sorry, but what part of sanity requires one to support someone who blindly approves of allowing the murder of 4000 valiant volunteer Americans?
Her excuses for voting the use of force, for denying the Levin amendment - turn my stomach.
I am a veteran - I know the hard work and risk of life that goes with service to this country.
I have sweat my ass off for this country - and I did so proudly. But even then - I spoke out openly about the abuses of the Marcos regime (so called democracy) in the P.I.
So - please tell me why she deserves even the FIRST word of respect from me?
In case you haven't noticed - this is not a monarchy here.
When was the last time you spoke with a friend and then found out three hours later he was dead, dead while serving his or her country? And my service period was peacetime. The military is a dangerous business, even without bombs going off over your shoulder every ten seconds.
April 11, 2008 3:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you as well for your service.
April 11, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very spurious reasoning about Bush going to war anyway. Look at the stand Dodd took on FISA and here we are 4 months later, without having given the adiminstration what they want. But of course you could have made the same argument about Dodd's stand as you are about Clinton's, and you've have been just as wrong then as you are now.
And the reason to bother to do the right thing is that there was so much at stake, or as Lincoln Chafee out it:
April 11, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Like I said, that's another post. Which I will do soon.
April 11, 2008 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was supposed to reply to Louisville's comment asking why no one posts about why they're for Obama.
So has anyone else noticed that sometimes when you're typing a reply, the checkmark in the "reply to whoever" box will disappear and reappear and disappear and reappear?
April 11, 2008 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, the best way around this that I've found is to click on your alias at the top of the page (where it says hi "______") and sign-in from your profile page. Otherwise the reply button seems to get lost half the time, so you can't be sure if your reply will show indented below the person you're replying to or not.
Hey TPM! Will we ever get a preview pane? So I don't go mucking up other people's threads, like did above.
April 11, 2008 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love the way the title of your article was calculated to bring in the Hillary supporters. I also love the way you practically force the reader to drag your objections to Hillary out of you. That was a good one. I almost dropped out at the fourth paragraph, but got snagged again by your disarming admission in the fifth. But you lost me on the sixth by opening with your family history. I guess I just don't care. Sorry. I hope you enjoyed yourself.
April 11, 2008 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Golly, Otto, I'm crushed. Other than Dembecilic and creepy ice cream head avatar guy, you are the one person here whose approval was most important to my sense of self-worth.
April 11, 2008 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely Beautiful.Possibly the most eloquent,moving explanation of one's thoughts regarding decicsion-making I've ever read,regardless of topic. NC,you're a hell of a writer and a True Patriot. Thank You.
April 11, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any student of history, particularly of the middle east knew this war was a terrible decision. Period. Every person that voted should be familiar with that history,if not they have no businness running for or being in congress.It will be years before we know just how much damage that dreadful decision to vote for the Iraq war really costs the United States. A vote for the war simply cannot be overlooked.
April 11, 2008 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you read Informed Comment by Professor Cole?
April 11, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is your dad still alive?
April 11, 2008 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
No. He passed on several years ago.
April 11, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
When my dad died I had a recurring dream for about a year. In the dream I was being roasted slowly in a pit of coals. The strange thing was it actually hurt. A little at first, then enough to wake me up.
He and my uncles were all in the Pacific and he actually occupied Japan.
Our fathers and mothers really were a magnificent generation. They literally saved the world.
April 11, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nicely written post, NCSteve.
I must offer a crucial correction of fact, however. You said:
This sentence is about one-third correct. It's true that the Iraq War was an illegal, immoral, preemptive act of aggression.
The vote part and the characterization of Iraq part are both wrong.
The vote for "authorization" had nothing to do with the start of the war. That's because the war had already started in the spring and summer of 2002, long before Congress went through the public formality of voting:
Called Operation Southern Focus, the bombing of southern Iraq in 2002 was an attempt by Rumsfeld to provoke Saddam Hussein into an artificial casus belli. Saddam didn't take the bait.
Tony Blair was onboard with Bush's "regime change" plan in April 2002. By October, Congress was impotent to halt what had already commenced. Obama even more so. His words were in fact "just words."
The truth is, both Dem candidates are hawks. If you examine Obama's rhetoric closely, he's equivalent to Clinton in hawkishness.
Of course, you are perfectly entitled to hold Clinton's vote against her as a way to determine your choice for president. You can hold it against her even knowing the facts about the start of the Iraq war. You can hold any number of votes, positions, and statements against her. I don't think it much matters as long as Bush is still in power.
With that in mind, as November nears, Iran will likely be provoked just as aggressively as Iraq was. I think our troops are not leaving the Gulf now that they are there. And Gen. Petraeus just laid the groundwork before Congress.
April 11, 2008 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
When it comes to Iran and the Iranian intelligence service, I'm never sure who is provoking whom. But your point that Petraeus is doing all he can to stiffen the will of the American people to stay in Iraq is right on. If you've read his field manual, you know that he considers our defeat in Vietnam to be a political defeat.
I can't leave the echo chamber today without pointing out that I have consistently pointed out that the Petraeus ploy won't work with Clinton, while Obama and his advisors have set themselves up for it. If Obama is elected, the date we end the occupation of Iraq will be in the hands of the American generals, the Iranians, the Shia and the insurgent Sunnis -- not in the hands of President Obama.
April 11, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why? I haven't heard Clinton OR Obama react to Petreus in a way that would tell me that one would stiff him and the other would do whatever he said. Have you?
April 11, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Gasket,
The position you take here is as dangerous as any I've ever read.
Do you understand what you are saying?
First off, if our President has already started an illegal war, you're saying OUR CONGRESS has no power to stop them.
On top of that, you're saying that when a wanna-be dictator begins prosecuting an illegal war without the countries knowledge, since Congress is absolutely powerless to stop them, they should just go ahead and approve the war.
I agree with you about one thing. The AUMF vote was NOT about starting the war. IT WAS ABOUT ENDING IT! To assert that congresses oversight of a dictatorial executive branch is a "formality" is shocking.
From my perspective, Congress had a sworn duty to do everything they possibly could to STOP this war, ESPECIALLY since it was SO APPARENT it was already started.
April 11, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Slouch,
My position was clearly stated thus: The Iraq War was an illegal, immoral, preemptive act of aggression.
I then set out to correct the widely held misconception about the timing of the start of the war relative to the authorization vote in Congress.
I do, but apparently you don't. I'll do my best to clarify, however.
Of course I'm not saying that!
This appears to be exactly what happened when a radical faction of Republicans took control of the WH, both houses of Congress, and the mainstream media. But I haven't seen Congress rushing to stop the president from domestic spying or suspending habeas corpus (among many other things), either.
No need to be shocked because I haven't asserted any such thing. I've simply been wide awake for the duration of this administration, that's all.
If Congress's "sworn duty" were to stop this war, why hasn't it been stopped?
Regarding "SO APPARENT": What's apparent is that you didn't read my links carefully, if at all. If you had, you would have gleaned this: The 2002 bombing wasn't revealed publicly until after the 2003 invasion. I am not claiming to know who in Congress knew what was happening when. But there was certainly majority support in Congress for the invasion, especially after Colin Powell's command performance.
I don't know how you managed to profoundly misread me as advocating that Congress should passively approve illegal wars. Perhaps I should have said Democrats were impotent to stop the Iraq war?
April 11, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Gasket, You've won this round. I did NOT read your links.
I still have some quibbles with your reply, but I've got a square dance to go to. I need to lift a lot of whiskey to warm up my bowing arm.
I'm tired of fighting today. I give up. I hope you have a great weekend.
April 11, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You fiddle, Slouch? omg! My dream is to go to fiddle camp someday to learn! lol! Have fun! :-)
April 11, 2008 11:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Slouch-- I didn't catch that you were in the National Guard. Good on ya, and thanks for the service.
April 11, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
NC,
I too read your post astonished from what are deeply conceived thoughts.
I can't even find the right words to say how this thread has affected me.
April 11, 2008 2:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely brilliant post NC Steve. You captured the impact of war very well indeed. More than all the bullshit about 3am phone calls and dodging sniper fire, hillary's vote for the war exposes her as the abject triangulator in chief. It's not about doing the right thing, it's about doing what's in her best interest. I don't know that any other politicians are different but she has shown her true colours.
Someone also noted earlier that the war is not wrong because it turned into a clusterf*ck or because we've been in Iraq more than 5 years (as NC said, that's another post!). It's wrong because it was built on lies and never made sense. As Obama said "I oppose dumb wars".
I will always remember George Carlin's spiel on honesty in politics. He said how Bob Dole came along and said "I'm a plain and honest man" and the people said "bullshit", because he's a politician. Then Bill comes along and says "hi folks, I'm completely full of shit and how do you like that?" and the people said "well, at least he's honest"!!!
Just like Bill, Hillary is full of shit and people are getting tired of it.
April 11, 2008 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's is absolutely nothing misogynist implied here.
Anyone that knows me knows that I largely refuse to shop Wal-mart - even though it is the only large retailer in my town right now. Why? Because they are whores. Everyone I speak to knows that I call them 'Whore-mart'. As in - "who needs American workers - even though we advertise otherwise", as in their pathetic attitude towards health care for their employees and one of their top store managers once saying "that's what the county health board is for." Or - hey - our competitors pay for their employees health care, but we what the taxpayers (who already gave us abatements and a zillion other favors) pay for our plan.
Whoring is the act of forsaking principle for gain.
Anyhow - I have called many businesses and individuals whores over the years. Some people DESERVE the term. People can and will prostitute themselves. Please don't tell me you have heard these terms applied exclusively to women.
As a veteran I find Hillary to be quite the whore, I might think differently but she can't even admit that she had ample opportunity to review all the facts. I can't help it she not only gets lobbied - but in this case she also got Chalabied. That's her own freaking ignorance. I know this I WAS NOT FOOLED, and I am just me. And I nearly was ostracized and once ended up getting hit in the face for saying my opinion on the war, and I was actually being polite.
Now - she wants to 'rescue us all' from her pathetic, politicized decision.
Her failure to properly investigate the most critical decision of her term, her failure to even support the Levin amendment and her failure to admit that she gave short shrift to the value of life (not - "I acted on the info we all had" - which is a crock of manure - EXCUSES) does not constitute a requirement on my part to give her an iota of respect.
Given the greater power she enjoyed by celebrity among other senators - she is doubly guilty of abandoning principle. She, standing with feingold, standing with Byrd, standing with levin - could have swayed many more. Patty Murray, Debbie Stabenow and Barbara Boxer all stood up and said no. Wyden, Leahy, Jeffords and Reed all said no.
Mikulski said no.
There were at least FOUR strong women who said NO!
There were 23 Senators who said NO!
There were 133 Representatives who at great political peril - as all faced election in three weeks - all said NO!
Watch "Buying the War" sometime and then tell me how she could excuse her YEA!?
I can't help it that there are no strong synonyms for 'whore' that rhyme with war, I would have used it.
April 11, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was supposed to be a reply to OregonActivist (way above) who suggested I was being a misogynist.
That must be why I have complimented Sebelius (repeatedly), Boxer, Stabenow, Feinstein and others in past posts.
April 11, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Someone from Texas being polite? I don't believe it! Despite all your cute "So quite you coulda heard a mouse piss on a cottonball" and "They got along like a hair-in-a-bisuit" euphemisms, I KNOW people from Texas like to buttons. Anyway, hop your face healed fine. Learn how to punch, you're from Texas for Christ's sake!
April 11, 2008 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm from Ohio - not Texas
I'm a real scrapper - when I have to be and have been (ex Navy, Engineering division = better know how to scrap, cuz - it's gonna happen sometime)
However, I wasn't about to bust a woman in the chops, in public. Notice I didn't say 'punched' in the face.
This is not to say I have never punched a woman in the face - but that's a whole 'nother story in a much uglier situation and a female friend was being pummeled and that woman PUNCHED me in the face first as I was pulling one of her male friends off of my female friend. My friend had called me because she sensed danger when she was about to close a bar in a very small town, I happened to have a working office/apartment about a block away and was there when she called for help. I walked into a real hornets nest.
April 11, 2008 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fist fighting hurts, doesn't it?
April 11, 2008 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
When the short debate on the war was being discussed, I remember asking out loud, "So we are just going to assume they have WMD and bomb them?" All around me people were saying they must know something we don't or they wouldn't go forward. It seems our senators were too busy to take pause and read the fine print.
On the question you received for the experience of the two candidates, I continue to feel that in some way too much experience from the "family" requires you to repay way too many favors. (Baby Bush being a great example) I actually love Obama's lack of favors to pay back. And besides it is who you choose to surround yourself with that matters.....and based on the campaign success and personnel changes, Hillary has proven to be less than competent even with ALL that experience.
April 11, 2008 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was a great post. Thank You.
Simply put:
# of Americans killed by Osama bin Laden # of Americans killed by George W. Bush>4000
Enabeled by Clinton. If America goes to war, every single American should be ready to sacrice their lives for the greater-good of this country. I have never seen that for the Iraq War. I wonder if that kind of support would've helped in Afganistan? I suspect so.
April 11, 2008 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
NCSteve said:
Are you a pacifist, then, Steve?
Because if you're not a pacifist, this is a selectively dishonest statement against Hillary.
This is not a challenge to your beliefs but rather to your argument: I'm curious why you don't say so if you are a pacifist, or how you reconcile any wars if you aren't?
April 11, 2008 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
And this brilliant comment is all you got from this post? Wow -- you are really deep!
Why send people to die for no legitimate reason? For a lie about our country being in the kind of danger that might end in a mushroom cloud --- no one should have died for that bogus bs.
Saddam's nastiness had nothing to do with the call to war. NOTHING! It was not worth the life of one brother, son, daughter, father, mother, or anyone. The $5,000 per SECOND that this debacle is costing could have been spent on infrastructure bebuilding, on public transportation, on health care, and also on R&D for alternative energy sources. This vote was a blunder and we'll be paying for it for decades.
NC's point is that each family affected personally by this war will also be changed, and some may never get over it. I always wonder as well, if one of these dead soldiers might have found some answers for us; cures for cancer; cures for war-mongering come to mind.
Hillary voted for it and she was wrong. Her motives may be debatable, but I also agree that they were political; and I am entitled to make a decision on her based on my observation of her previous and current behavior.
NC gave HIS take on it. Write your own blog if you want to give yours in detail.
April 11, 2008 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
In other words, shut up and get out of the echo chamber. You are causing a disturbance in the force. Unless you get your head straight, they are going to post your name to the Wall Of Shame.
April 11, 2008 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can see that.
April 11, 2008 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pssst: Billy, I'm confused. Is pacifism bad?
April 11, 2008 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do I oppose all war? Am a a pacifist?
What the man said. I don't agree with him because he said it. I support him because I share his beliefs, on this and on most other subjects.
"The act" I was referring to was not the simple act of voting to authorize a war. If you're voting to start a war to roll back an agressor, or against someone who's already started shooting at us, I'm down with that. If you're voting to start a war to wipe out Bin Laden and his buddies, I'm totally on board with that and, by the by, would suggest that history indicates you should finish the war you're in before you start another, if you have a choice about it.
Rather, I thought I made the act I was referring to pretty clear, to wit, the act of voting
Got that? Voting for an illegal, immoral war to be waged on a transparent pretext of preemption, and doing so solely to serve her perception (incorrect, as it turned out) of what would best serve her political ambitions. That's what was and is unforgivable.
Even if you disagree that that's why Hillary voted for it, and disagree that this particular war was, in fact, immoral, agressive, illegal, for stated reasons that were clearly pretextual, would you not at least agree in principle that a member of Congress who did vote for a war like that for reasons like would have done something unforgivable?
April 11, 2008 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
And the speech she gave on the floor of the Senate explaining her vote?
I have to tell you Steve, I think I would have voted the way she voted.
I think you are in for a rude awakening in September if Obama is your candidate. In your and Obama's estimation 73 Senators and 85% of the American people were "wrong" on the issue of backing Bush up with an AUMF. 27 Senators, Obama and about 15% of the American public were smarter than we were. You had better judgment, assuming that somehow the issue of Saddam Hussein and Iraq's role in the Middle East would have been successfully resolved some other way. We'll certainly never be able to prove that you couldn't have done that.
If the election were being held in the echo chamber, Obama would certainly win. But it's not.
Sure hope my name doesn't end up on that Wall Of Shame.
April 11, 2008 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't know if you'll see this response, NCSteve, since your post fell off the Recommended list, but you're making some incorrect assumptions about my position I want to clarify. Although I do support Hillary Clinton for the Dem nomination, I don't support the war in Iraq, I never supported the war in Iraq, and I don't support Hillary's or anyone's vote for its authorization.
I don't disagree that that's why Hillary voted for it. It's why my other senator, Chuck Schumer, voted for it too.
I don't disagree that this war was immoral, aggressive, and illegal. (Did I mistype something somewhere, or did you just misread what I wrote earlier?)
FYI, I have always been opposed to the invasion and bombing of Iraq. I did whatever I could do at the time to make my opinion heard about it. I am appalled and horrified by it.
Unforgivable? In this case, no. You know why? Because I blame George Bush for the war in Iraq, not Hillary Clinton. Bush waged it, not Hillary. That's really the only difference between us, Steve. I blame Bush.
April 11, 2008 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, Tom. I've got the Wall Of Shame up. You can go on over and post those names now.
April 11, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
dembillc is a jerk and I will gladly meet him/her/it the alley to defend my honor. I am not a sexist pig and do not consider women whores, any more than any of us that work for a living are.
In my business we joke that only the best-paid prostitutes have to pretend they like it. So we try keep a straight face during shows.
April 11, 2008 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you go over to the Wall Of Shame Post to put his name up, would you please post Greg Sargent's name, too?
April 11, 2008 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd do it myself, but I don't have posting rights.
April 11, 2008 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hillary isn't a whore... as far as I know.
April 11, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
For that you should change your nick to "witless."
April 11, 2008 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its not a nickname. I am a Witt.
April 11, 2008 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
okay, wittless, then. :-)
April 11, 2008 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, I didn't say Hillary was a whore... as far as I know.
April 12, 2008 1:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
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