So this isn’t meant to be a Bernie vs. Hilary diary. This is just me doing a personal reflection (in public? on DKos?) about my thought process behind who I plan on voting for and the reasons behind it. Maybe I can get someone along the way to reflect similarly as well.
Let me also say that I will vote for Bernie in the primaries. Should Hillary win the nomination, I’ll be 100% behind her, despite what I’m about to write about.
My decision making process about how I plan to vote has been to choose to vote for a candidate and what he or she stand for. I have attempted, up until now, to avoid making a vote against a candidate.
Finally, I won’t write this pretending to know for certain what a candidate’s motivations behind their previous actions are. I only write about how those actions affect my opinion and my decision making process.
The Unforgivable
It is easy to see what a disaster the Iraq War has been.
4491 American Dead soldiers. 32,524 American wounded soldiers returned home from conflict.
16,623 Iraqi military and police dead by many estimates and sources.
Anywhere between 90,000 and 1,000,000 Iraqi civilian deaths due to violence from the war. Over 20% Iraqi households surveyed have been affected by violence and death as a result of the war, and that is a low estimate.
136 journalists, 51 media support workers, and 94 aid workers were killed in the course of the war.
318 coalition deaths and 1487 contractor deaths are recorded to have occured during the war.
62% of our soldiers treated at the VA are coming home with brain injuries or trauma.
I could go on about PTSD, veteran suicide rates, and the horrible physical injuries they’re coming home with.
I could go on about how the Iraq war and invasion directly led to the creation of ISIS and the current civil war gripping both Iraq and Syria.
War is hell. This war was no different than the rest.
All the anti-war progressives that were saying this would be a horrible mistake were right.
Hillary Clinton’s Role
Hilary Clinton voted for the authorization of the use of force in Iraq. She was one of 29 Democratic Senators to vote in favor of the AUMF in 2002. This is the same year that Democratic Senators numbered 49. One Republican voted Nay and one independent voted Nay. If all the Democratic Senators voted against this, it would not have passed.
Now whether or not she truly believed what intelligence she was fed, in my own heart I can’t forgive her for that vote. Even if it was a very difficult vote for her to make, she voted for the invasion and the resulting disaster. Even if she voted “Yes” with reservations, she still voted yes.
It was the worst vote of her life, and I personally just can’t forgive her for it. I would be a hypocrite if I did. It would go against my principles as a lifelong progressive.
If Joe Biden were running for president, I wouldn’t be able to forgive him for his vote and speech on the floor of Congress as well.
In previous diaries that I’ve written, I’ve called for the people who pushed for and voted in favor of this war to essentially be pushed out of the public light. While I specifically mention Republicans, it would be a betrayal of my values and a betrayal of myself if I didn’t say the same of pro-war Democrats.
It made me (and still does) so upset to see Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and many others still on TV spewing their lies about the war and their role in it.
A major difference is that Hillary Clinton admitted she was wrong for her vote in a 2014 memoir.
“I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had,” she writes “And I wasn’t alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong.”
And yet, even if in her heart she was a dove, I can’t forgive her for voting yes.
Even if in her service in the Senate, she was fooled by shaky intelligence, I can’t forgive her.
A vote of that magnitude and “wrongness” should have ruined her and anybody’s political career. If I had made a mistake like this in my workplace, I would be fired. The only difference is my mistakes don’t end up with thousands of dead and wounded.
Don’t Forget
I am choosing not to let the Iraq War, its supporters, and its consequences slip out of my memory. I am allowing it to influence my choices as an anti-war progressive. We are still feeling the effects of this war almost thirteen years after the invasion.
To be clear, if Hillary wins the nomination, I will vote for her despite my misgivings. How can I say that after everything I just wrote? She is far from the perfect candidate in my eyes, but she is light years from the evil on the Republican side, on a large variety of issues I believe in. And I will not “throw away my vote” by abstaining, even in my deeply blue state that I reside in. All the above does is affect my voting in the primary process. For the first time in the primary process, my decision is based both on voting for a candidate and against another.
Wednesday, Jan 27, 2016 · 2:17:32 AM +00:00
·
NetminderElite
I wanted to add that the purpose of this diary is not to put Clinton supporters on the defensive. Or to put Bernie supporters on the attack. I am genuinely interested in knowing if people can justify voting for her with her Iraq war vote and how they justify it. I know I cant, but can you, and how?