Hillary on Dems on Iraq: We’re “struggling”
posted at 3:29 pm on June 23, 2006 by Allahpundit
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Because they’re so conscientious, you see. Their Iraq plate’s piled high with “difficult issues,” like whether to withdraw now or six months from now.
As Kos never says: in division there is strength.
“Although unity is important it is not the most important value. It is, I think, a tribute to the Democratic Party at this moment in time that we are honestly and openly struggling with a lot of the difficult issues facing our country,” Clinton, D-N.Y., told the New Democrat Network…
“I think we come out more united,” said Clinton. “We’re not blindly united like the other side is, where they are like the three monkeys, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak no Evil. They’re not going to say anything negative about the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense or anybody else.”
What they’re really struggling with is trying to find a policy that’s defeatist enough to satisfy their nutroots base while not so defeatist that it alienates the majority before the midterms. That was the point of that dueling banjos routine between the Kerry and Levin withdrawal proposals earlier this week. It has nothing to do what the most effective strategy for Iraq is; it’s pure politics, and supremely cynical.
The Dems aren’t the only ones who want a timetable, though. According to the Times of London, Nouri al-Maliki’s amnesty offer to the Sunni jihadis calls for the same thing. Not the very same: there’s an enormous difference between the U.S. withdrawing under fire from a failure of will versus withdrawing at the request of a sovereign government that’s seeking to assert its sovereignty. It’s night and day prestige-wise — but as a tactical matter, it’s dusk and early evening. If the peace deal results in most terrorists laying down their arms, then the timetable is harmless; if it doesn’t (and it well may not, as it’s hard to tell how many jihadis are actually being represented in these negotiations), then all you’ve accomplished with a timetable is having telegraphed your maneuvers. Moreover, as Captain Ed says,
Talabani’s offer seems a bit naive, especially regarding the Ba’athists. Never known for their love of democracy, they have always wanted nothing more than a Stalinist regime to run Iraq, just as it did under Saddam and as their cousins still do in Syria with the Assad regime. The best-funded and best-resourced of the insurgencies would not surrender lightly just to join a multiparty representative government. One has to think that the Ba’athists just want to play for time so that they can wait for another chance to take power through assassination rather than an insurgency that obviously has little chance of progress.
Presumably Maliki and Khalilzad think they’re going to knock out most of the terrorist opposition by getting the Sunnis to sign off on this, because if not, they’re going to be stuck with roughly the same problem they have now but with a timetable of U.S. withdrawals on top of it. Call it “the Murtha scenario.” I guess he/we could back out of the deal and cancel the timetable if it turns out that only a small number of fighters quit the insurgency as a result. But that’d be hugely demoralizing for Iraqis, not to mention a major embarrassment for Maliki himself. Hope he knows what he’s doing.
The other point of contention is the amnesty for Sunni jihadis. I said my piece about that here; a U.S. soldier stationed in Iraq writing today in the L.A. Times thinks differently.
As for Murtha: it’s time.
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Democrats are on the Amnesty train.
Struggling is a very tame discription. They are dying!
easy87us on June 23, 2006 at 3:40 PM
“I think we come out more united,” said Clinton.
What she really meant was..”we are in the wrong direction together!”
easy87us on June 23, 2006 at 3:45 PM
Amnesty deals are not uncommon as part of settling rebellions. Our own Civil War is a prime example.
I predict that the Sunni tribal elements will accept a deal to put down their rebellion. They have everything to gain if they do so. The Baathists and the Saddamist holdouts won’t, and they will have to be hunted down and killed, along with the remaining Al Qaeda operatives.
This presumes that the US does *NOT* establish a time table to withdraw as the Democrats demand.
As to the Democrat’s “dance” with cutting and running, I believe that the leftist base will not succeed, at least in this election year.
If the Democrats fail to gain control of at least one House of Congress this year, I would not be surprised to see the party collapse with the left and the “moderate” liberals going their separate ways for ‘08.
georgej on June 23, 2006 at 3:50 PM
She said”They’re not going to say anything negative about the president”
Where have you been, Hillary? We have just cracked down Bush Amnesty Bill.
Remember Harriet Mier? Remember the port deal?
Being ignorant is one thing, but repeating your husband’s mistake is profound.
“I never have sexual relationship with that woman” said Bill Clinton
Now you are doing the same thing….so sad.
easy87us on June 23, 2006 at 3:52 PM
Allahpundit, thank you so much for featuring this.
Please, please, please, one more time, post the Hillary picture with the laurel-wreath, above the Murtha picture!
Notice how, not so subtly, she called our representatives and us “monkeys”. Suppose that was a Fruedian slip or a calculated move?
easy87us, you nailed it!
Entelechy on June 23, 2006 at 4:19 PM
chrrrrr! should have been “Freudian slip” :(
Entelechy on June 23, 2006 at 4:20 PM
What are the dems struggling with….”cutting” or “running”? No matter, they want to surrender.
Defeated in both withdrawal votes, they still seem to think they’ve “won” somehow. Huh?
There’s no unity within the democommie party.
doingwhatican on June 23, 2006 at 6:03 PM
They need to just “cut and run” before the next election then we wouldn’t have to worry about them any more.
Duty, Honor, Country
(in THAT order)
Rowane
Rowane on June 23, 2006 at 6:32 PM
Good post, Allahpundit; I think Ann Coulter said the same thing a bit more pithily when she observed, “We finally give liberals a war on fundamentalism, and they won’t fight. They would, but it’d put them on the same side as the United States.”
After Vietnam, about the only war you’ll find the donkey party’s leadership willing to engage in is Class War in America. Compounding the trouble for today’s donkey party is that in its rage against Republicans in general and George Bush in particular, they can see only one enemy for all occasions.
The result is an extension of the caricature of a political party that the Dems have become: their entire essence can be summed up as, “If George Bush is for it, then I’m against it! If George Bush said it, it must be a lie!!
So it’s simple for them, really: If George Bush says, “We’ve got to see the thing through,” the the Dems reflexive answer is, “Then I’m for not seeing it through.”
Check of proof: We’ve seen some liberal types, like George Clooney, suggesting that we should do something militarily to intervene in Darfur. But wanna bet that if George Bush came out in favor of such action that overnight the libs’ position would change to, “No war!”?
Spurius Ligustinus on June 23, 2006 at 6:40 PM
Hillary actually trying to tell us one very important fact: Liberals have no platform!
Their only plaform is to oppose GOP platforms. They have surrender the control of issues to GOP. This is not new. It happened long time ago. Instead of finding a new set of platforms to counter GOP, the liberals dragged the Democrats into a culture of negative attack hate Bush campaigns.
Once they determined to go negative, they forgot that this is a two way sword. When Cunnigham was nailed they could not wait to come out and yell “Culture of Corruption”. You all know what has happened since then…
ChiCom Chairman Mao said ” whatever my enemies oppose, I am for it, and vice versa.” This is a communist thinking that the liberal left brought into the DNC!
In the Iraq war, GOP is for a long term peace and stability for the middle east, so the Demo left has no other option but to propose a pullout!
This is like quick sand. The more negative they get the deeper they sink.
and sink…and sink….with every treacherous act by the MSM…they sink more…
They want to revive the party. But reviving the party takes principles…a set of high moral principles! But the Demo is filled with Hollywood and rap grade moral principles…so it is hopeless.
How can you save a party that highly praised their former leader who has said ” I never have sexual relations with that woman”?
easy87us on June 23, 2006 at 7:24 PM
Note that the liberals and the media claimed that the Republicans being split on Immigration is bad.
How come the Democrats being split on anything is then good?
It depends what ‘being split’ means…
Entelechy on June 23, 2006 at 8:02 PM
Hillary shouldn’t be surprised by their dilemma. For years the Democrats have been identifying with and pandering to the far left wing of their party and now they have discovered that most Americans cannot tolerate the left’s absolute insanity. Either dump that radical crowd Hillary and move in another direction, or continue to suffer. Unfortunately, for Hillary, she is too tightly tied to the left and can’t break free.
rplat on June 23, 2006 at 8:04 PM
Clinton triangulation strategy at its best. In her statement, she is still trying to please both sides of her polarized party while skewering the loyal opposition. If the political right is unified on a policy, then we are blindly being led down a primrose path. But with no concensus on the left, they are merely struggling while trying to achieve the unity for which she criticizes the Republicans. In trying to appease all sides of the political left, logic and reason are the first things to go.
csjd on June 23, 2006 at 8:13 PM
One problem with amnesty in Iraq is the same problem with amnesty in the United States for illegals: you are only encouraging more of the same.
Providing an amnesty to the current insurgents may encourage others to to fight our forces on the assumption that more amnesties will eventually be forthcoming. In other words, the message will be “you don’t have to fight us forever, just until the next (inevitable) amnesty rolls around.”
Fighting US forces for a period of months or a few years until the next amnesty is a lot more viable than fighting them indefinitely.
It sends the wrong message to the insuragents; namely, that we just aren’t very serious.
tommy1 on June 24, 2006 at 3:23 AM