The New York Senator sounded suspiciously like President Bush in declaring that US security would be seriously jeopardized if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state “that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda. It is right in the heart of the oil region. It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests…. Coalition capabilities, including force levels, resources and operations, remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq.” Senator Clinton, according to the reporters, “declined to estimate the number of American troops she would keep in Iraq, saying she would draw on the advice of military officers.”
But she left little doubt in her interview that, very much like President Bush, she viewed a long-term US presence in Iraq indispensable, visualizing a continued force level sufficient “for our antiterrorism mission, for our northern support mission, for our ability to respond to the Iranians, and to continue to provide support, if called upon, for the Iraqis.”
In other words, when talking seriously to serious reporters about the situation in Iraq, she forgot all about her endlessly repeated slogan about “bringing the troops home,” and similarly dispensed with another popular line that turns up in nearly every Iowa or New Hampshire appearance: “If we in Congress don’t end this war before January 2009,” she unequivocally pledges, “as president, I will.”
Does providing enough troops to “continue to provide support, if called upon, for the Iraqis” honestly amount to “ending this war”?
Dr. Noah Feldman, law professor at NYU and Harvard, provides a sobering perspective on the Clinton contradictions. In an April 8th article in the New York Times Magazine, he notes that Democrats in both the House and the Senate overwhelmingly supported maintaining enough “forces in Iraq for the purpose of fighting terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” – directly echoing Senator Clinton’s line.
But Feldman, who helped the Iraqis draft the constitution that provided the basis for the current government, observes that “the ‘fight al Qaeda’ policy cannot work the way it is being promoted. It is not easy to attack Al Qaeda without taking on the larger Sunni insurgency….To be accomplished successfully and without unnecessarily endangering soldiers in the line of fire, the policy would require roughly as many troops in Iraq as we have now. The result would probably look a lot like the Bush policy. And it could take years to show success.”
Of course, the mainstream press prefers not to focus on the surprisingly close resemblance between the unpopular Bush approach and the vague alternatives occasionally suggested by campaigning Democrats. Senator Barack Obama has also declared that if elected president he “might” keep a “small number of troops” (whatever that means) in strategic positions in Iraq.
In the case of Senator Clinton, there’s such an obvious contradiction between her “bring the troops home” rhetoric and her simultaneous promises to keep substantial forces in-country as “an essential stabilizing element,” that the general failure to hold her to account represents a stunning demonstration of journalistic malfeasance.
Her apologists might claim that when she says “bring the troops home” she actually means “some troops,” not “all troops.” But this bears a close enough echo of long-ago debates about “what the meaning of the word is, is” to make the public, or any Clinton, feel queasy.
The simple truth remains inescapable:
One Hillary says she’ll “end the war” and “bring the troops home.”
The other Hillary says she’ll keep a powerful, potent presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
And one of these two women is, without question, shamelessly lying.