Letters to the Editor
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Hillary's vote on the Iraq war.
First the obligatory caveat. I was against the war as soon as I heard that Bush started bombing in the no-fly zone. I believe that was February of '02. I haven't bothered to look it up.
However, I just once wish that people would acknowledge the position Hillary was in during the Iraq vote. She was the senator from New York. Secondly, she represented the largest Jewish vote outside of Israel.
Given the position she was in, I don't see how she could have done anything else. She and her fellow senator from New York are the only ones I give a pass on that vote.
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Point the finger at the media.
The mainstream media is guilty as charged of all the crimes that bushco and congress committed. Your mouth and lips belong to warbuckers. Anyone one who is against war is to be ridiculed and not considered appropriate for voters perusal.
Hillary voted, you people sold it, just like beer and happy pills.
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Do you also...
... give Hillary a pass on voting for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, moving us closer to war with Iran?
She did it enthusiastically, because she staked out a position very early on to the far right on Iran.
When she says she's against war, she's simply lying.
At least John McCain is upfront about his desire to kill as many Arabs (and Persians) as possible.
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accountability
Hillary's vote helped throw 4000+ dead American soldiers, unknown #'s of gravely wounded veterans, uncounted millions of Iraqis, and also untold #'s of American & Iraqi families who've lost loved ones "under the bus" - whether by ignorance (but i trusted GWB not to do it!), failure to research the issues (but i really thought there *were* WMD's and terrorists in Iraq!), or simple political expediency when leadership was called for (but almost all the other democratic senators voted yes!). you & the rest of Hillary's apologists would feel better about voting for her if she apologized??? I wonder how much better the families of the dead and wounded would feel..
Any way I look at these pathetic excuses for that vote I see someone who doesn't deserve *my* vote, apology or not. She had a chance to do the right thing and take a leadership role, but instead thought first of how it would affect her presidential chances in 2008.
for shame.
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Masculine/Feminine
"It boiled down to wanting to avoid the Kerry flip-flop label, as well as believing that the first serious female candidate for commander in chief needed to look resolute, and couldn't afford to admit a mistake. Whoever sold her on that idea must have been ... a man. (Many people blame Mark Penn.)"
1.) I love how Mark Penn has become the villain in the Hillary story. It's clear that when Obama wins the nomination, Penn will be cast as the greedy, stubborn, domineering man who refused to let the real Hillary come through. Isn't Hillary in control of her campaign?
2) Hillary's desire to be perceived as resolute or "tough" in the McCain/Bush understanding of toughness goes back further than her unwillingness to apologize or clarify her vote in 2002. In fact, her her decision to give Bush authorization to invade Iraq was a result of her not wanting to be perceived as too feminine or too soft.
3) In addition to hearing Hillary give a speech explaining her war vote, I'd LOVE to hear her give a speech about gender and the way that gender has been used in this election. Many of Hillary's more vocal surrogates and supporters have been all to willing to make this a contest between black men and white women. We've had parsing of who actually had the vote first, who was accepted to Harvard Law first, who has it harder in American society today. I truly believe that defining this contest as a competition between the oppression of black men and white women has hurt Hillary more than any other poorly phrased comment or tin-eared answer from Hillary or Bill. We've been told over and over again that sexism is real, but at no point has Hillary come out and defined the issue as she sees it. I understand how frustrated HIllary supporters are when they see black voters choosing to vote for Obama. But, imagine how much credit black voters would have given her if she had even just tried to explain that she understands the legacy of racism and sexism in America but that all of us, her supporters and Obama's supporters, need to expect more of ourselves and of our society.
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Apologies miss the point
It comes down to one of two possibilities.
One possibility was that Hillary believed that the vote was the right thing to do. She examined the evidence, believed Bush’s nonsense about coalitions and restraint, talked with her advisers and fellow senators, and made the judgment that it was the right vote at the right time.
If that was the case, she failed us in our most dire hour. She trusted the wrong people (Bush and Cheney!?) and made the wrong conclusions. “But how could she have known the truth?” some say. Well, 23 senators knew better, I knew better, and it was her job to know better.
The other possibility—the much more likely possibility—that she voted for the war powers act was political expediency. Hillary wanted to be on the winning team, or rather, she didn’t want to be seen as a defeatist or naysayer when W declared how sweet victory was and how the American flower of democracy—God’s gift, wasn’t it, George?—was blooming in the desert sands. No, that scenario wouldn’t play well in 2008, would it?
In either case, she lost my support. And apology or no apology, she is not getting my vote. “Oh, I really made a mistake on that vote supporting Bush’s war in Iraq, the one where 35,000 (50,000? Who knows?!) Iraqis are dead, and 4,000+ Americans are dead. The war that has cost us $6000,000,000,000. The war that proved to be about next-to-nothing. Yeah, that was a mistake and I’m sorry.” That won’t cut it, and misses the point.
It is my sincere hope that for those of us left who are still to cast a Demo primary ballot think long and hard about the depth of Hillary’s failure when we needed her most.