Hillary
Clinton's Achilles Heel?
By Joshua Frank
22 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Senator
Clinton is sure trying hard to court the antiwar vote while still sustaining
a muscular U.S. foreign policy agenda as she runs for the presidency.
On May 16, Hillary Clinton sided with 28 other senators in support for
advancing legislation to cut off funding for the war in Iraq after March
of 2008.
Despite her modest anti-war
gesture, Clinton was still not willing to predict how she would side
on similar legislation in the future. "I'm not going to speculate
on what I'm going to be voting on in the future," Clinton told
reporters shortly after the vote. "I voted in favor of cloture
to have a debate."
Hours later Clinton changed
her mind, and decided that she wanted to do more than start a debate
on the matter. "I support the underlying bill," she said.
"That's what this vote on cloture was all about."
Even though the race for
the White House is still in its infancy, Hillary Clinton has yet to
take a coherent position on the Iraq war. The senator from New York
has continually blamed President Bush for putting forward faulty information
about Iraq's WMD programs, as well as Saddam's alleged ties to al Qaeda
while he was in power. Clinton, like the rest of us, was lied to, and
as a result she naively voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq
to destroy Saddam's regime.
But Clinton's maneuvers to
evade responsibility four years after the fact are meager, not to mention
completely without merit. In fact Clinton sold the same lies and deceptions
as the Bush cartel, which plunged us into this catastrophic war.
"In the four years since
the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has
worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile
delivery capability, and his nuclear program," Clinton said in
October of 2002. "He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary
to terrorists, including al Qaeda members ... It is clear, however,
that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his
capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying
to develop nuclear weapons."
Perhaps Hillary was taking
a line from her husband Bill's repertoire, who as president bolstered
the same case for disarming Hussein. "If Saddam rejects peace and
we have to use force, our purpose is clear," said President Clinton
in February of 1998. "We want to seriously diminish the threat
posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
What WMD program? As United
States weapons inspector Charles Duelfer explained in a fall 2004 report,
Saddam Hussein had shut down Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons programs following the first Iraq war in 1991.
Hillary Clinton has tried
to have it both ways on Iraq for several years. Voting for phased troop
redeployment, while also supporting continued funding for the occupation.
Her vote last week is surely not an indication of which way she'll turn
in the future.
The Iraq war to Hillary Clinton
is more about political expediency than honesty or integrity, and it
may well prove to be her Achilles' heel over the course of the next
year. Like President Bush, and so many other wayward politicians, Hillary
is also to blame for the shameful bloodshed that plagues Iraq today.
Joshua Frank is
co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped
Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with
Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to
be published by AK Press in March 2008.
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