Tag: Hillary Clinton

Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher recalls a time when General David Petraeus was still capable of honesty. Referring to a New York Times Op-Ed by Boston University professor of history and international relations Andrew J. Bacevich, Mitchell writes:

What will end up being the most famous quote of the Iraq war? Remember, President Bush did not actually say “Mission Accomplished.” Perhaps Vice President Cheney’s “final throes” will take the prize. But increasingly, as the significance of Gen. David Petraeus grows (seemingly by the minute), it seems possible that it might up being his once-obscure 2003 remark to a well-known newspaper reporter: “Tell me how this ends.”

The quote was cited by Bacevich, who wrote:

The United States today finds itself with too much war for too few warriors. With the “surge” now giving way to a “pause,” the Iraq war has become an open-ended enterprise. American combat operations in Iraq could easily drag on for 10 more years, and a large-scale military presence might be required for decades, which may well break the Army while bankrupting the country. The pretense that there is a near-term solution to Iraq has become a pretext for ignoring the long-term disparity between military commitments and military capacity.

Bacevich wants an answer to Petraeus’s question. And no one else seems to be even asking it. Bacevich would also like Petraeus to explain approximately when the war ends, and how long our exhausted troops can continue to meet the demands being made of them, and how their strain will be alleviated.

But back to that old Petraeus quote, Mitchell writes:

Another good idea undoubtedly doomed to fail, but worth the effort to try:

Military Families Speak Out is challenging U.S. Senators — starting with two named Obama and Clinton — to filibuster and stop President Bush’s request for more money for the Iraq war and occupation, another $102-billion.

Democrats aren’t even talking about saying no.

The Democrats’ plan appears to be to load up the bill with more domestic spending, rather than trying to stop the war spending. They want to add money for everything from storm-damaged national parks to local law enforcement grants to trying to use nuclear fusion to produce energy, CQ reports.

Instead of trying to stop the war, they’ve written Bush a letter, politely suggesting that he should change his strategy and plans.  Right. That’ll be happening any day now, no doubt.

Military Families Speak Out has a simple idea:  Stop the war by refusing to fund it.  That, you may recall, is how we finally got out of Vietnam.

They start by quoting Obama and Clinton, then ask them a simple question:

“Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year – now.” — Sen. Barack Obama, September 12, 2007

“Our message to the president is clear. It is time to begin ending this war — not next year, not next month — but today.” — Sen. Hillary Clinton, July 10, 2007

On the campaign trail, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both say that the war in Iraq needs to end. Military Families Speak Out has one question for them: what are they doing now as sitting United States Senators, to bring our loved ones home from Iraq?

I have been searching for a way to convey to Clinton supporters how offensive her attempts to change the topic from the Tuzla Fables to the Wright sermons ever since the former undercut her campaign.  If fanning the flames of white racial resentment against Blacks is her only path to victory, she has no path to victory.  It has struck me the old consciousness-raising technique of recasting acts based on race, gender, sexuality or religion as if they reflected one of the other dimensions of difference, may shed some new light here.  Being a Jew who originally wanted Russ Feingold to run for President (despite some misgivings about his electability), it occurred to me that we can examine the legitimacy her actions are by imagining how they might translate to a situation where religion, not race, was the concern.

Join me, then, in the parallel universe where it is Russ Feingold rather than Barack Obama who won Iowa, drove John Edwards out of the race, and now had an insurmountable pledged delegate lead over Hillary Clinton.

In this universe, controversial sermons from Feingold’s rabbi have recently come to light.  How might the Clinton campaign respond?

Mark Halperin’s comments yesterday that the Hillary campaign was presenting Obama’s race as an argument to superdelegates to get them to cross sides into her camp left me confused: is sexism worse than racism, so we need to vote for Hillary because things would change more, or is racism worse than sexism, so we need to vote for Hillary because Obama can’t win in the general?

Because we’ve definitely heard both. I don’t know how many Clinton supporters have made the former, from Gloria Steinem to Geraldine Ferraro, and for those of us sitting on the sidelines of these two profoundly complex and privileged people getting caricatured as their race and sex, it’s annoying. And such comments are definitely not moving the discussion forward.

As I’ve said time and time again, to say flatly that one is worse than the other erases the intersections of race and gender, rendering black women invisible and white men normal, denies the way factors such as ability and class play into the lives of the candidates, and ignores the multiple narratives on race and gender that work differently to prevent people from reaching various aspects of their potential.

Original article by John V. Walsh via Counterpunch.com:

If you’re anti-war, are you considering Ralph for President?  McCain’s not anti-war, and HRC and BO have both voted to fund the Iraq Occupation.  Is Ralph the choice?

In a stunning development, both Obama and Clinton have decided to drop out of the race for President. Word from both camps is that Hillary and Obama had a private meeting last night over cocktails. According to an anonymous source, both Clinton and Obama had been nervous about their poll numbers against John McCain. They were sick of fighting with each other, and they wanted the election to be about the issues again. The anonymous source said that both candidates agreed that conceding the election to John Edwards was the right thing to do. We should be expecting a press conference announcing their withdrawals from the race later this afternoon.

more below the fold…..

Gore expects the situation to “resolve itself” by the time the convention comes around.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2…

MURFREESBORO – Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will “resolve itself” before the party’s convention in late August.

Gore told The Associated Press that he sees no urgency in endorsing a presidential candidate.

“What have we got, five months left?” he said in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

When pressed that several prominent Democrats, including Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, have expressed hope for an earlier decision on the nomination, Gore said: “I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”

Sort of disappointed to see Howard Dean doing something a little different ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…

“If we have an ugly, divided convention, we will lose. John McCain is not a strong candidate for president. The only way we lose is if we are divided.”

I think Gore’s got the right frame here, the correct vision to adopt. Dean should be backing away from even giving the appearance that Democrats will be anything but united, come August.  

Does a candidate’s policy proposals reveal the kind of president he/she would be?  Paul Krugman today in the NYT suggests that policy proposals have revealed the kind of leadership that past presidential candidates.  He points out that Bush proposed big tax cuts for the rich and followed through on them, making life harder for the rest of us.  

The moral is that it’s important to take a hard look at what candidates say about policy….. policy proposals offer a window into candidates’ political souls – a much better window, if you ask me, than a bunch of supposedly revealing anecdotes and out-of-context quotes.

The current issue that McCain, Clinton and Obama have responded to is the mortgage crisis.  Krugman analyzes the three responses and I found his analysis interesting and to be troubling for progressives.    

One of the reasons I have a hard time getting enthused about either of the Democratic candidates is that I find both of their Iraq withdrawal plans lacking. I am enthused about ending the Bush era, and I’m enthused about preventing the election of another Republican who doesn’t even seem to realize we have a problem in Iraq, but neither of the Democrats offers a plan that I consider to be complete.

Reading such is usually particularly galling to Obama supporters, because he gave such a pretty speech in 2002, and is therefore supposed to be vastly superior to Clinton, on Iraq. Some of the more deranged Obama supporters even go so far as to try to pin the war on Clinton, as if her having voted no on the AUMF would have changed anything other than her present political fortunes. It was a terrible vote, but she is demonized for it even by many of the same people who now lionize John Kerry, because he supports Obama, and despite his having made the same terrible vote made by Clinton. And, of course, most of these Obama supporters ignore the reality that despite the very pretty speech, when Obama was not in the position of actually having to vote on the resolution, his voting record has been nearly identical to Clinton’s, since he has been in the position of having to vote. That’s one of the reasons I find this particular argument for Obama and against Clinton to be, at best, specious. But the main reason is their withdrawal plans. I have said it many times: what happened in 2002 and 2003 is now irrelevant; the only thing that matters is what begins to happen in 2009. Which candidate will do the best job of most expeditiously getting us out of Iraq? And that doesn’t even begin to address the question of reparations, which isn’t even a topic of discussion.

Naomi Klein recently published what I consider to be the best book on politics in at least a generation. I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, and I will undoubtedly do so again. Many times. It should be required reading for anyone who claims to be politically informed. So, I also want everyone to click over to Huffington Post, and read her new article, with Jeremy Scahill:

Sixty-four per cent of Americans tell pollsters they oppose the war, but you’d never know it from the thin turnout at recent anniversary rallies and vigils.

When asked why they aren’t expressing their anti-war opinions through the anti-war movement, many say they have simply lost faith in the power of protest. They marched against the war before it began, marched on the first, second and third anniversaries. And yet five years on, U.S. leaders are still shrugging: “So?”

There is no question that the Bush administration has proven impervious to public pressure. That’s why it’s time for the anti-war movement to change tactics. We should direct our energy where it can still have an impact: the leading Democratic contenders.

Because Klein and Scahill also understand that although both Democratic candidates are much more honest and realistic than John McCain, when discussing Iraq, neither is coming close to being honest and realistic enough.

First, more news about brutality being used against protesters in Qinghai:

“They were beating up monks, which will only infuriate ordinary people,” the source said of the protest on Tuesday in Qinghai’s Xinghai county.

A resident in the area confirmed the demonstration, saying that paramilitaries dispersed the 200 to 300 protesters after half and hour, that the area was crawling with armed security forces and that workers were kept inside their offices.

The Beijing source said resentment at the paramilitary presence around Lhasa’s monasteries prompted one monk at the Ramoche temple to hang himself.

snip

“It’s very harsh. They are taking in and questioning anyone who saw the protests,” the source said. “The prisons are full. Detainees are being held at prisons in counties outside Lhasa.”

link: http://www.reuters.com/article…