The truth, that is. As a lawyer, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton should be conversant with the formula, "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." But, you'd hardly know it from the St. Patrick's Day speech she delivered at the George Washington University in the year of Our Lord 2008.
However ill-considered her introductory remarks about non-existent snipers in Bosnia and yet another reminder of her cursory ties to Northern Ireland
I started my morning meeting with the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to talk about the peace process in Northern Ireland, and it was a stark reminder of how long the road is toward peace
it's her approach to Iraq that makes one wonder whether the Senator would recognize the truth, if it bit her. The fictions seem so solidly in place.
Let's consider just one paragraph. Frankly, I really can't be bothered dissecting any more. There's work to be done getting our forces out of Iraq and time's awasting.
I will start by facing the conditions on the ground in Iraq as they are, not as we hope or wish them to be....the point of the surge was to give the Iraqis the time and space for political reconciliation. Yet today, the Iraqi government has failed to provide basic services for its citizens. They have yet to pass legislation ensuring the equitable distribution of oil revenues, yet even to pass a law setting the date of provincial elections. Corruption and dysfunction is rampant, and last week General Petraeus himself conceded that no one, in either the U.S. government or the Iraqi government, feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.
I will start by facing the conditions on the ground in Iraq as they are, not as we hope or wish them to be....
There's the promise of truth-telling, but since the bases don't come up, the "whole truth" is clearly not part of the agenda.
But the point of the surge was to give the Iraqis the time and space for political reconciliation.
If she were honest, she would admit that the 'reconciliation' involves Iraqis accepting a long-term U.S. presence on bases, islands of death that have been plopped down in their midst. The preferred formulation, lifted whole from the Bush Administration, resembles nothing so much as a determined parent putting a recalcitrant child in time-out.
Yet today, the Iraqi government has failed to provide basic services for its citizens.
This is a non-sequitur. Besides, what sense would it make to rebuild not just what the U.S. has destroyed, but what is likely to be destroyed again in the 'continuous bombardment' that both the participants in the Helsinki Agreement and the Air Force in its weekly summary of actions admits? Not to mention that there's no logical connection between politics and sewers, except in the minds of people who still seem to think that stressing the population will cause the government to collapse. It's as if the lesson of Dresden, which is universally recognized as over-kill, had made no impression. Unless, failure is the desired outcome.
They have yet to pass legislation ensuring the equitable distribution of oil revenues, yet even to pass a law setting the date of provincial elections.
What legal basis there is for ordering a sovereign nation to adopt particular legislation is a question that should be asked. Iraq, under the direction of Saddam Hussein, had taken offensive action against Kuwait, which merited some penalty (disarmament, embargo, no-fly zones). However, since those penalties were complied with and Saddam Hussein is now gone, the fact that there's resistance to an occupation by people who, sometimes, refer to themselves as alQaeda in Iraq, does not make the continued occupation legitimate. That the U.N. hasn't quite figured out how to get the bully out, isn't a proper reason either. Finally, while the law may be stretched to make something appear legal to the world community, the occupation is immoral.
Corruption and dysfunction is rampant,
This is a good example of not telling the whole truth. The Iraqi puppets may be corrupt (it's what the U.S. has been aiming for), but the majority of the money being spent corruptly and for no good purpose is being spent by the U.S. By failing to be specific, the Senator presents a partial truth to perpetrate a lie.
and last week General Petraeus himself conceded that no one, in either the U.S. government or the Iraqi government, feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.
The significance of a concession by an American general escapes me. Certainly there's no reason to expect an objective assessment from him; nor should we consider the "feelings" being referenced determinative of anything. Would it be more accurate to state that the Iraqis are no closer to being reconciled to the presence of forces that have displaced and killed a fifth of the population? Definitely. But that would be the truth and the Senator is long past the point where the truth of this land-grab can be admitted by her. The time to do that would have been before the authorization to use force in order to stake a claim on what Saddam Hussein had refused to give up 9basing rights for the Air Force). Now, after five years, her investment in the fiction is such that she can't come clean.
I will grant that there's been some progress. It used to be generally accepted that politics stopoed at the nation's shores and foreign relations wouldn't be discussed during the electoral process--a really detrimental tradition considering that the only autonomy enjoyed by the President is in managing our relationships with other nations and the day when the caution against entangling alliances was honored is long gone.
In any event, I would hate to think that the kerfuffle over snipers was designed to distract attention from the much more important goings on, the continued slaughter in Iraq--not just of our own troops, but of the Iraqis now being routinely assassinated by drones discharging hellfire missiles and dropping five hundred pound bombs.
Wonder if someone's got the time to discuss the morality of that. Has Gary Solis' question been resolved?
"A problem is that Bubba is not a member of an army that is a party in a conflict," explains Gary Solis, a former Marine prosecutor at Georgetown University Law School. Solis says there is disagreement among experts about whether, for example, a terrorist is taking a "direct part in hostilities" when he is out walking his dog. "There is definitely an interpretational issue here," Solis says. "We are pressing the envelope in the law of armed conflict when we do this. I think some of the international community would say this is unlawful."
I'd say it's definitely immoral. Wonder what she who would be president thinks.