Hillary
As if I needed another reason to vote against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary…
I don’t of course. However, Ted Koppel gave me something else to think about with regard to her campaign statements on Iraq.
Even though I’m a lawyer, I have to admit that I didn’t catch Hillary’s cute play on words with regard to the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Hillary has been stating quite often that if she is elected President, she will “pull our troops out of Iraq” and “bring our troops home” and “end the war.”
If you look closely at her choice of words, however, you will see that she does not actually commit herself to anything. As Koppel points out, she does not commit to pulling ALL troops out of Iraq after she is elected. She has even hedged her popular applause lines by telling the New York Times that she “would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.” Sounds an awful lot like our current policy, doesn’t it? And how exactly would a reduced force accomplish all those tasks at the same time?
It wouldn’t of course. Hillary is just as confused as all of our politicians on how best to solve the terrible situation in Iraq, but she is more willing than most to capitalize on an anti-war sentiment to score political points on the campaign trail. True to form, however, she has no intention of actually doing anything to stop the bloodshed once the election is over.