From yesterday’s New York Times, behind the Time’s Select subscription wall, David Brooks offers us these pearls of wisdom:
Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?
Below the fold, my head explodes in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
Here on Daily Kos, we’re sensitized to consider the source. After all, we know that David Brooks is a proverbial ‘Snake in the Grass’ and any ‘advice’ are the equivalent of candies laced with poison. Still, I’ve now gotten this email forwarded to me by no less than three non-Blog-identified ‘liberal’ friends. I just have to ask, why the sage advice David?
Could his sudden affection for Hillary have anything to do with the fact that every time we debate the Republicans directly on the war, we win? After all, having Hillary as our candidate would seriously dampen our ability to challenge a Republican, like say maybe John McCain, on the war. After all, aren’t McCain and Clinton’s position on the war identical? They supported the concept of the war, but oppose its execution, right?
As all Kos readers know, on the blogs there is a phrase ‘concern troll’ that is used to describe a known Republican operative who all of sudden expresses ‘concern’ for how the democrats are going about their business. Brooks concludes his piece with this:
Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself.
Let's consider this.
First, there were many Democrats who had the good judgment to oppose the war from the outset. The most currently visible now is presidential candidate Obama, but Pelosi, Murtha, Dean, Fiengold, Byrd, Kennedy, Paul Wellstone, and many others in both the house and the Senate. The biggest hurdle for a candidate to get over is, why should we trust them to be president if they could not handle this vote?
Why is this an important question? Well, the reality is the reality. Democrats who aspired to the Presidency can be divided into two camps, those who voted for the resolution because they felt cornered politically, and they didn’t want Bush to make them look bad. In other words, those who put there own political ambitions ahead of the most important political decision most of them will make in their life time. And those who opposed the war on principle because they felt it was the right decision (either politics be damned, or more interestingly because they shrewdly realized that being right in the long run would be even more politically advantageous than caving to Bush in the short run.) We all know who’s in each camp, but a short list would say that – Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Biden, Dodd, etc were in the first, and that Feingold, Gore, Dean, and Obama were in the second.
John Edwards simply says that he believed the intelligence, thought Hussein was a threat based on the intelligence they were given, and thought the war was necessary. He now says he was wrong to believe the intelligence, and wrong not to weigh the opinions those opposing the war more strongly at the time. That’s admitting a certain dopeyness which is alarming and the key question when considering him for President is, if he was so dopey then, why would he make a good president now? At least he's trying and we're generally a forgiving bunch. We know what his winks mean. He's sorry, he fucked up by putting expediency ahead of priciples, but he wants us to know he's learned his lesson and he won't do it again. Ok, John, point taken, but we're watching you.
Hilary refuses to make such an argument. What she is saying is that she thought the use of force was premature, but that she gave authorization for it anyway, because she trusted Bush (she says Powell, but it comes down to the same thing), not to actually use force. This argument is absurd.
I mean, c'mon, cut the BS. If you were so concerned about the diplomatic rout, why didn't you hold back your votte until Bush approved it. Even more damning, why were you silent when Bush ignored diplomacy and rushed to war over the objection of our allies? Even Brooks admits:
On March 17, Bush gave Saddam 48 hours to disarm or face attack. Clinton tried to be critical of the Bush policy while being deferential to the office of the presidency. She clearly had doubts about Bush’s timing, but she kept emphasizing that from her time in the White House, she knew how unhelpful it was for senators to be popping off in public on foreign policy.
So, after all her earlier stated concerns about the use of diplomacy were over-ridden, when she knew Bush was going to war without UN authorization, when given the explicit chance to speak out against the war, after all her objections had been over-ridden, what did she do?
At one press event in New York, she nodded when Charles Rangel said Bush had failed at the U.N. But when reporters asked Clinton to repeat what Rangel had just said, she bit her tongue. On March 17, as U.S. troops mobilized, she issued her strongest statement in support of the effort.
The big question is why? And of course there is only one answer. To protect her political hide. Now I see why David Brooks likes her so much, what a perfect political candidate to beat the crap out of next year following the primaries. If she makes life and death decisions about going to war based on these cynical calculations, man they can keep her jumping at her own shadow for months! After all, it worked with Kerry, didn't it?
Let's return to the Brooks summation
Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself.
Do I think the world owes me an apology? No, of course not. The world opposed the war with massive demonstrations that were entirrely ignored. I was part of those demonstrations and experienced the feeling of fellow Georgians throwing garbage at me and trying to run me over with their car while they blasted Toby Keith. Would I like an apology from Dick Cheney, The American Heritage Institute, The David Brooks and Jonah Goldberg's of the world? Sure, I'd love one, but I'm not holding my breath.
The key question here is if Hillary will explain her vote in way that meaningfully engages the reality of what she did. Does Hillary have to own up to putting her political career ahead of the country? Oh shoot, you know us liberals, we’d probably settle for some type of dopey excuse like Edwards gave. But why the hell should we support her if she won’t even give us that?