cybermage's Journal: Hillary Clinton Two-Faced About Iraq

In a world of sound bites, presidential candidate and Democratic Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, is playing a very cynical game. Amidst paragraphs of speech talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq, she buries her intention to keep troops in Iraq if elected.

While many reports simply repeat the withdraw mantra, if they even bother with that, Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post deserves credit for paying attention to Clinton's speech:

IOWA, July 10 -- Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton traveled to this crucial caucus state today to assure voters that she would keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future because "we cannot lose sight of our very real strategic national interests in this region."

In truth, the best we can expect from Clinton is a move toward the Baker-Hamilton proposal of falling back to a training and supporting position. However, anyone with practical insight into how wars are fought know that if the new force, the Iraqi Army, isn't prepared to replace American troops before we pull back to a training roll, we will give serious ground, perhaps precipitating all out civil war. No Commander in Chief is going to pull troops out of a combat role with replacements not ready to take over if the troops will remain in the combat theater.

Clinton is not alone in her pro/anti war duplicity. Democratic candidate Barack Obama issued a policy statement to Foreign Affairs magazine that is remarkably similar to one Mitt Romney issued for the same issue of the magazine. Both had a very 'Stay the Course' flavor and both even advocated increasing the size of the military.

If you want a candidate who will pull the troops out on January 20th, 2009, I'd look past Clinton, Obama, and Romney who all seem intent on future military operations in Iraq and the region at large.

Further Reading:
      Obama Calls For New Role For U.S. Troops

Reprinted with permission from apathy.net.