Barackface: Hillary's Pro-War, Anti-Immigration Plank

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Hillary's Pro-War, Anti-Immigration Plank

Terrorism

Hillary has been pro-war. She voted for the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Now she says she did not really mean that. But as late as 2006, her position was that Rumsfeld has to be fired, as in the decision to go to war was right, but its implementation, the execution of the plan got screwed up by the Defense Secretary. That was not an anti-war position.

If it were a minor issue, that would be one thing. But this just so happens to be the single biggest foreign policy mistake America has made in a generation.

Sometimes you let bygones be bygones. If both Barack and Hillary are going to end the war, what the heck, you might think. But before the ink has even dried on Hillary's new position, she has already made very clear that for her to end the war means something very different than what it might mean to the rest of us. She might bring back half the troops over a few years and leave the rest behind, and in her book that will still be an end to the war. Now that is stretching it in my book.

Then you can say, or maybe Iraq has been Bush' mistake, why blame Hillary! Just when that thought might be gelling, she had an Oops, I Did It Again moment on Iran.

She passed a resolution that says the president of Iran is a terrorist. That is the first step in the direction of war. That can not be explained any other way. That was not a vote for diplomacy. That was botched diplomacy.

Barack is no pacifist. He fully understands that being Commander In Chief will perhaps be his number one responsibility as President of the United States in these perilous times. And that is why US security is more important to him than empty, brave-sounding talk that gets bogged down into dumb wars and botched diplomacy. He wants results. He wants security. He wants peace.

War is always a possibility: he gets that. But what he gets and Hillary does not seem to is that war always, always has to be the weapon of the very last resort. That is how you make victory in war possible. By using it as the weapon of the very last resort.

America under Bush has been a country that keeps wanting to fight another state with a standing army. That is to be in denial. The Al Qaeda is not a state, it does not have a standing army, and it is stronger today than it was before 9/11. To invade Iraq was to take one eye off the Al Qaeda. Military action against Iran would be to take both eyes off the Al Qaeda.

Immigration

There is nothing illegal about immigration. There is managed immigration, and there is mismanaged immigration. That is all. This is a country of immigrants, always has been. If Australia was founded by convicts, America was founded by immigrants.

If sounding like Bush Republicans on war and immigration will give Hillary the nomination and the presidency, will that have been a victory at all? What mandate will she have to do things differently than Bush has been doing? We might as well instead give Bush a third term.

The boys who ran Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign are the same boys running Hillary 2008. This is no girlie campaign. Hillary is just a masthead. Make no mistake, as the race tightens, those boys are going to want to play hardball. Mark Penn 1992, Mark Penn 2008. I wonder when James Carville himself will surface.

The Dems on the Hill took one stand on immigration during the last national attempt on immigration reform. It was a stand to get the 12 million illegal immigrants on a path to earned citizenship. That was a valid stand. Too bad it went down in defeat. Hillary supported that. Now is she backtracking on that stand? Is that what it is?