If I Knew Then What I Should Have Known Then
Sat Feb 17, 2007 at 09:28:36 PM PDT
As Markos illustrates in his front page post, Senator Hillary Clinton is digging in her heels on her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq War. In disturbingly Bush-like fashion, she states "I take responsbility for my vote"...but fails to state just how she takes responsibility. Indeed, in the following breath, she retreats to her fallback position that Congress was misled into war. Here is the exchange:
On Saturday, Clinton was asked by a University of New Hampshire professor why she refused to apologize for voting to give Bush the authority for the March 2003 invasion.
"I take responsibility for my vote. It was a sincere vote based on the facts and assurances we had at the time. Obviously I would not vote that way again if we knew then what we know now," she said, her oft-repeated explanation.
Clinton's argument that Congress was misled may have merit. Certainly, a Senator should not have to apologize when it was the President's fault, right?
Except it wasn't just the President's fault. And that is what Clinton fails to acknowledge.
For me, the question is one of judgment. Of foresight. Of the ability to accurately weigh both current facts and future possibilities.
Let us put aside the issue of a misled Congress. Let us focus on the mistakes made, in the context of her belief of the administration's claims.
Had Clinton known then what she should have known then, she wouldn't in good conscience have voted for this war at all.
Because even with the President's ominous speeches, even with Colin Powell wagging vials in the air, and even with the lead weight of all the bad intelligence in 2002, the scales should not have tipped toward invasion.
Twenty-three Senators and 133 Congressmen voted against the Iraq War Resolution. They knew that this President could not be trusted with awesome war powers. They knew that a possible invasion would be catastrophic. They knew that pre-emptive war in the Mideast would have disastrous consequences.
They knew.
I hope you will indulge me a bit to quote, in full, Barack Obama's 2002 speech opposing the Iraq war.
I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.
I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil.
I don't oppose all wars. After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.
I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that...we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.
You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.
Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.
Compare Obama's speech to Clinton's 2002 floor speech. She similarly lays out the same facts as Obama:
Now, I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people. Unfortunately, during the 1980's, while he engaged in such horrific activity, he enjoyed the support of the American government, because he had oil and was seen as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
Yet Clinton drew a different conclusion from that same set of facts: that she should ratify the President the authority to invade Iraq (she states in her floor speech that the President already had the authority). Clinton's weighed the evidence (as it was presented to her), but she simply did not give enough weight to the clear and disastrous consequences of an invasion of Iraq.
That conclusion, that flawed analysis, is Clinton's mistake.
Being misled wasn't necessarily a mistake. But being misguided most certainly was.
Now, Clinton stubbornly refuses to admit mistake out of fears that she'll be painted as a flip-flopper, as Kerry was in 2004.
Yet what type of leader does Clinton believe America desires? A Kerry or a Bush? A leader who can admit mistake, or a leader who refuses to do so?
The 2008 contenders who have admitted their vote was wrong realize that it was a first and necessary step toward rebuilding their credibility with the Democratic base. I can only surmise that Clinton's "love me or leave me" approach is aimed more at gaining support in a general election than winning a primary. Moreover, I suspect she believes her bill (calling for a start to redeployment in 90 days) will go a long way toward healing the wounds with the Democratic base.
On that, again, Clinton is mistaken. For the 2002 Iraq vote isn't just about that one vote. It's taken on a life of its own, and every day Clinton refuses to admit her mistake is another day she paints a picture to primary voters of just what type of President she would be.
A president who in the past has failed to look forward, and in the present refuses to look back.
And America certainly doesn't need another president like that...
