Realizing there is nothing more heinously unfair to do to a Clinton than quote their publicly stated position from the newspaper of record, and understanding that desiring to discuss the actual issues of the 2008 campaign only indicates my deep and abiding misogyny, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Senator Hillary Clinton's position on Iraq, stated succinctly:
"Voted in 2002 to authorize invasion, now opposed; opposed troop increase; start phased withdrawal within 60 days of taking office, with the goal to have most troops out by the end of 2013."
http://politics.nytimes.com/...
The year 2013. Let that sit. Allow the word to drip from your tongue. Say it aloud. Feel the quiver in your spine as the meaning of it unfolds, and think carefully about the media refrain that there are no issues of substance differentiating the Democratic candidates.
Hillary Clinton will bring home the last American troops from Iraq when the first American children to be born to fathers killed in the invasion and occupation of that country are ten years old. At which time, if we date the beginning of the Vietnam War from the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Iraq war will have lasted longer than Vietnam. Moreover, by that ten year time frame, we are in January 2008 only half-way done.
Iraq, meet your Richard M. Nixon.
When I explain the significance of 2013 to my friends, no matter their background, no matter their profession or job, no matter their race or sex or age, I invariably hear the same words hissed back at me, "As if there would even still be a country then."
Of course, that's hyperbole. We know only too well the United States can withstand an almost endless slow drip of dead soldiers, especially if they're poor enough and brown enough and the White House media spin is anesthetic enough. And face it, the Bushes have always been amateurs at media spin compared to the Clintons.
Why, I bet she could fill all of Arlington all over again and still be good for a second term.
For comparison, let's cite the position of Barack Obama, from the same chart:
"Opposed invasion from the beginning; opposed troop increase; withdraw one or two brigades a month to finish within 16 months."
Also, John Edwards:
"Voted in 2002 to authorize invasion, now opposed; opposed troop increase; withdraw 40,000 to 50,000 combat troops immediately and all troops within nine to 10 months."
So, let's see. We have John Edwards, who would have troops out by November 1, 2009. We have Barack Obama, who would have troops out by, say, May 1, 2010. Now, according to Wikipedia, there are currently 3,915 U.S. dead after, oh, 57 months of war. That's roughly, on average, the relatively quiet months and the Fallujahs all included, around 70 U.S. deaths per month. So, even the six months between Edwards' and Obama's withdrawal dates, which doesn't seem that important until put in these terms, equals around 420 dead.
Now, let us consider the difference between Obama's May 1, 2010 withdrawal date and Hillary Clinton's assumed December 31, 2013 withdrawal date (since Clinton actually leaves open the possibility that American troops would remain after 2013, we're actually being extra fair to her by using the end of that year as the absolute end date). There are 43 months by my estimation between May 1, 2010 and the end of 2013, during which time there would be approximately 3,000 U.S. dead in Iraq.
And while we're thinking in these broad mathematical terms, it's helpful to remember that currently U.S. injured in the Iraq war is somewhat over 28,000. This means that there is about a 1 to 7 ratio between U.S. war dead and U.S. war injured. Applying that prospectively, this means that between Obama's May 1, 2010 withdrawal date and Hillary Clinton's 2013 end date (for which, once again, we have no guarantees because she says some troops will stay) there will be around 21,000 injured soldiers.
We are talking about children who will never grow up to know their mothers or fathers, or whose ideas of what their mothers and fathers look like will be one of those damn lifesize cardboard cutouts. We are talking about men and women who will never walk again, never be able to hold their children again, never be able to speak again, never be able to fuck again. We are talking about young men and women's faces transformed into masks that most people only see in horror movies. We are talking about human souls put through the absolute worst horrors imaginable. We are talking about the willful and deliberate sacrifice of human life, our neighbors' children or our own children, for what?
We can anticipate the objections to this line of reasoning.
(1) "The surge is working": I don't mean to discount any of the learned analyses as to why "the surge" is not working that appear regularly on this site, but to me "the surge" is a public relations gimmick obscuring the real reason for a decline in violence, that the United States has bought off the Sunni insurgency piecemeal through the (God help us, this phrase is Orwellian even for these bastards) "awakening councils." It is enough for me that the military leadership of the United States has never previously thought it a terribly good idea to buy off the people we are fighting by giving them a lot of guns and a bit of power, perhaps hoping they'll trip over their own feet and break their necks lugging all that ordinance home with them. More likely, considering the recent history of the Middle East, we'll see those weapons again. Real soon. Considering the intractible nature of the Iraqi political situation, I don't think one can realistically consider any momentary decline in violence (and to only 2006 levels, at that) as irreversible, permanent improvement.
(2) Yes, Hillary Clinton does say she will draw down troop levels, and obviously as there are fewer U.S. combat troops in Iraq to be killed under such a policy, fewer would be killed. But the truth is that there have been plans to lower troop levels in Iraq since 2004 and 2005, always dependent on the Bush administration's consideration of external factors in Iraq. Clinton's sensitivity to the situation on the ground means, really, that her policy of removing troops would probably go the same way as Rumsfeld's unless it was part of an actual and planned end to U.S. military operations in the country, much more like what Obama and Edwards suggest.
Moreover, apart from all this, Clinton's growing insistence that she will end the Iraq War "the right way" means that she's caught Surge Fever. It's fair to ask whether "the right way" means victory, or a (once more Nixonian) "peace with honor." If Clinton is leaving aside these public positions that have been the basic assumptions of everything I have been arguing to become a true "war president" determined to vanquish the insurgency once and for all, seal a triumph for the United States and safeguard U.S. oil companies' profits under the Iraqi hydro-carbons law, then we need to hear her arguments for why she is making this change.
After all, it wouldn't really be like a Clinton, would it, to base an entire general election campaign on a promise that is then jettisoned even before the inauguration with little more than a boilerplate statement about "changed conditions." Why, between now and January 20, 2009, Hillary Clinton could discover that there are Islamic terrorists in Iraq, who seek to do America harm; that Iraq is right next to Iran; that Iraq was invaded four years ago, and whoever did so left the people there very unhappy, and that because of any of these unexpected conditions, American troops would have to stay and keep watch on the oil fields after all. And keep in mind, the funny thing about the end of 2013 is that it actually occurs after the end of Hillary Clinton's prospective first term in office. So much can happen in four years. And so much can happen even after that next election.
So, please everyone, help me with this, because for the life of me I do not understand it. Why isn't the year 2013 plastered in attack ads across the country? Why isn't it making it into the sound bites of Edwards' and Obama's speeches? Why aren't their campaigns doing the math (hopefully better than mine) of how many more lives will be wasted by Hillary's diffident reliance on consensus (CAUTION is most assuredly not the word for the predilection with which one tosses away the lives of 3,000 countrymen and women on a mistake)? Why can't they see the American people, and most certainly the voting public of the Democratic Party, has not fallen for Surge Fever, but would unite behind the first candidate who would just point out the obvious consequences of the candidates' policy positions on the most serious and most widely publicized issue in the election?
Finally, and this may seem like a non sequitur, since everyone in the country is discussing the politics of tears, I would like to say that I don't view that sort of emotional display as feminine in the slightest. I teared up when I heard on my car radio five years ago that we had invaded Iraq. I wept hot tears when I saw the dead Iraqi bodies being flung on the cart in Fahrenheit 9/11. And I had tears streaming down my face the first time I saw on the evening news a soldier describe what it was like to not have arms to hold his son anymore. So, I know in a way that is very personal for me what it means to be emotional in that way.
But of all the horrible memories this war has given me, even considering the safety and ease I have experienced these years compared to the soldiers out there facing IEDs, snipers and sand fleas, one stands out. In December 2003 was at home in North Carolina at a bar, between Christmas and New Years, with a friend, sipping guinness.
Every voice in the bar stops. Out of nowhere we hear a man bawl as he describes what it was like to have a human being's head explode from gunfire at close range. I have never heard another human adult make that hopeless, hollowed-out, godforsaken noise. I felt it in my bones. Four years on, I still can't get it out of my head. I cannot think of the moral cost of this war without hearing that voice.
But what did that guy know? It's not like he's been through what Hillary has.