Yesterday, in her speech in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, Hillary Clinton said the following:
We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working.We're just years too late changing our tactics. We can't ever let that happen again. We can't be fighting the last war. We have to be preparing to fight the new war.
Was this an endorsement of the "surge?" Her campaign says no. From Talking Points Memo:
...the word "surge" didn't appear once in Hillary's speech, and her aides have been on record all day today saying that the tactic she referred to as "working" was not the surge but to reports of increased cooperation between Sunnis and U.S. troops.
Except that she didn't make that distinction in the speech. At the very least, it was an acknowledgment of nominal support for one aspect of the president's escalation policy and while she doesn't shirk from calling for withdrawal from Iraq elsewhere in the speech, the fact that she projects this apparently supportive view to a pro-war audience yet, as we well know, quite another to a more conventional Democratic base audience, plays into the widely held belief that she walks safely down the middle and plays both sides of each issue. In fact, on the war, polling has borne out the success of this strategy and John Edwards for one is sick of it.
In a statement released today, the John Edwards campaign calls her out:
Senator Hillary Clinton's view that the president's Iraq policy is 'working' is another instance of a Washington politician trying to have it both ways. You cannot be for the President's strategy in Iraq but against the war. The American people deserve straight talk and real answers on Iraq, not double-speak, triangulation, or political positioning.
...even as it goes on to concede Clinton's main point:
Our military's hard-won progress in Al-Anbar province should not distract us from the fact that pouring more military resources into Iraq is no substitute for the comprehensive national political solution that will ultimately resolve the situation in Iraq.
Now, I much prefer Edwards's position on the war generally and his framing of the "surge" more specifically, but let's not pretend it's a terribly substantive disagreement. There's plenty of having it both ways to go around. My larger issue with Clinton is when she chooses to reinforce right-wing talking points, whether it be her oft-repeated refrain "we're safer but not safe enough," or when she suggested that some Democrats don't think we face a real threat from terrorism, or elsewhere in her VFW speech where she clumsily transitions from talking about 9/11 and fighting terrorists directly into her praise for the new tactics in Iraq as though they're related. Talk about Bush/Cheney light. The more I hear her say stuff like this, the more Obama's accusation rings true.
|
|
|
Permalink :: 34 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
