Clinton: Immediate Iraq Exit a Mistake
Hillary Clinton is so utterly predictable. Days after her husband says that the Iraq war was a mistake, Hillary takes the opposite tack, saying that we can’t pull out immediately, as Rep. Murtha suggested last Thursday.
Here’s how the AP reports her comments:
The New York Democrat said she respects Rep. Jack Murtha, (D-PA), the Vietnam veteran and hawkish ex-Marine who last week called for an immediate troop pullout. But she added: “I think that would cause more problems for us in America. It will matter to us if Iraq totally collapses into civil war, if it becomes a failed state the way Afghanistan was, where terrorists are free to basically set up camp and launch attacks against us,” she said. At the same time, Clinton said the Bush administration’s pledge to stay in Iraq “until the job is done” amounts to giving the Iraqis “an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves.”
Sounds reasonable enough, right? Don’t kid yourself. First she says that immediate withdrawal would be a mistake. The second she’s distanced herself from Murtha, she realizes that she’s got to distance herself from the President or else she’ll lose the Looney Left activists.
Buried in here, though, is what she really thinks. When Hillary says the Bush administration’s pledge to stay in Iraq “until the job is done” amounts to giving the Iraqis “an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves”, it implies that she thinks that the Iraqi people aren’t interested in taking care of themselves. This totally ignores the fact that people are signing up for the Iraqi security forces even after getting threatened with death by Zarqawi’s terrorists. This ignores the sheer will shown by voters who braved the terrorists’ threats to vote on Jan. 30. These are the people who ignored the same terrorists’ threats and turned out in impressive numbers to ratify the permanent Iraqi Constitution.
The other thing that you’ll notice in parsing her comments is that she doesn’t condition anything on winning the war in Iraq. Don’t think that that’s pure coincidence. This is a calculating woman and she’s just left the door open to reverse herself if something tragic unexpectedly happens.
The truth is that Hillary thinks that and saying what she really means also afforded her a cheapshot at the President. If that’s the definition of a centrist, then I’d rather have a hardline conservative anytime.
She blamed the problems facing the United States in Iraq on “poor decision-making by the administration,” but added: “My view is we have to work together to fix these problems.”
Hillary obviously got too used to setting too much of the agenda in the Clinton administration. I don’t recall her husband reaching out that much with Republicans, especially where national security was involved. When Clinton sent cruise missiles into bin Laden’s camps, I’d doubt that Republicans would’ve endorsed that plan. I’m certain that they would’ve recommended either hitting them hard with more military assets or they would’ve told him to use special forces to do the job.
Personally, I didn’t trust Hillary on national security matters before and I trust her alot less after reading this article.
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing