2016 Postmortem

portlander23

(2,078 posts) Wed Oct 14, 2015, 04:48 PM Oct 2015

Twelve Years Later, Hillary Clinton Is Still Defending Her Iraq Vote

Twelve Years Later, Hillary Clinton Is Still Defending Her Iraq Vote
Joshua Keating
Slate

Clinton might have hoped that 12 years after that vote and seven years after she became Obama’s secretary of state, with a whole new set of foreign policy crises on the table, she would no longer have to answer questions about that vote, but no such luck.

In response to rival Lincoln Chafee suggesting that the Iraq vote is reason to question her judgment, Clinton replied, “Well, I recall very well—being on a debate stage, I think, about 25 times with then-Senator Obama debating this very issue. After the election he asked me to become secretary of state. He valued my judgment and I spent a lot of time with him in the Situation Room going over some very difficult issues.”

Clinton’s Iraq vote is her original sign in the eyes of the liberal Democrats flocking to Sanders’ candidacy. It’s also a reminder that Clinton is far more hawkish than the current president. Her interventionism didn’t end after 2003: She pushed for U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011 and supported arming Syria’s rebels years before the administration reluctantly signed on.

Clinton was clearly hoping to convince skeptical Democratic voters that she is no more hawkish than the current occupant of the White House. That might have been easier if the ghosts of 2003 didn’t keep returning.