Lessons from the UK: Why Hillary should stick by her war vote

What should Hillary Clinton do about the war? Should she tack against the war to secure the party nomination, or stick to her guns to show she is a leader and consistent.

In as superb piece of analysis on Real Clear Politics, Kathleen Parker shows just how much trouble these questions are giving the Senator:

Early on during the anti-war surge, she stood bravely by her vote. Then under pressure from the Democratic base, she said she wouldn't have voted the way she did had she known then what she knows now. By the first Democratic debate last month, she said she regretted trusting Bush when he said he would let U.N. weapons inspectors do their work. By Sunday's second debate, Clinton's Iraq War vote was really for "coercive diplomacy."

So can I offer her some advice based on our experience in Britain?

At the last General Election, it became clear that Iraq was Tony Blair's most significant political liability. The Conservatives were desperate to exploit it. Just one problem - they too had voted for the war on Iraq.

So Tory leader Michael Howard tried this line - I wouldn't have voted for the resolution to go to war if I had known the full truth. Yes, I support the war, he said. But, now I know the full story I wouldn't have given my backing to Tony Blair's explanation.

Funnily enough this was not a mere political ploy. He actually believed it. But it didn't work. It looked opportunistic as well as being a piece of lawyerly (Howard was a lawyer) evasiveness. In the election, he ended up being forced to argue that he would have attacked Saddam if he had known that the Iraqis did not have WMD. A position held by hardly any voter.

The lesson from this episode is that any attempt to escape responsibility for a pro-war vote will fail. Even using arguments, which you believe and can justify. The Senator needs to understand that she is stuck with supporting the war and arguments about detailed bits of resolutions are pointless.

The British experience endorses Kathleen Parker's view entirely:

Clinton would have done better to stick to her original principle: She did what she thought was right at the time and wishes the war had been better managed. That's an assessment other war supporters can share and that war protesters can respect. Americans tend to be forgiving of errors in judgment made in good faith. They are less forgiving of fudging history in the service of politics. 

Comments

[Rachel]

I just have a question: when is a war perfectly managed? Seriously, name me one.

[Rajpal Abeynayake]

Could i refer Ms. Parker to her last sentance.
'Americans tend to be forgiving of errors in judgment made in good faith. They are less forgiving of fudging history in the service of politics.'
That's what she thinks. The Clintons know otherwise. Ask Bill,

[Bobby]

All Americans are fools.

[Rowland]

It is bad advice to stick with a plan you know is immoral and illegal.

Now that it is well known that the vote to go to war was based on lies, it is perfectly all right for Sen. Clinton to change her vote, and channel the discussion and the blame towards those whose mendacity has caused untold human and material damage to a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. It was Rumsfeld who said that the targets in Afghanistan weren't "sexy" enough. Remember?

Many of us do, and Hilary and the rest of Congress should, also.

[alan]

I don't have much sympathy with politicians who claim they voted for the Iraq invasion because they were wrongly informed. How come I (and hundreds of thousands of others) knew that Bush's planned attack was a war-crime and demonstrated against it - even before the bombardment started? Robin Cook knew it too and resigned over it. -I don't have much sympathy either for those who only began to oppose the war when it started to go wrong.

[LatAm]

Hillary lived through the Viet Nam war, as I did. I learned that the government lied its way through the entire war. And she didn't? When the Iraq hysteria started, she couldn't smell the oil, see through the cheesy stories about aluminum tubes and mobile anthrax labs? I could, along with hundreds of thousands of others, as poster Alan says.

Did she never hear that the poignant testimony before Congress at the time of the first Gulf war, the story about the Iraqis disconnecting ventilators at a children's hospital ward in Kuwait, was pure theater put on by a member of a Kuwaiti diplomatic family in the US? Did she, an eight-year resident of the White House, not suspect that the information was invented? Did she really believe that Saddam and Ben Laden were collaborating? She did not even read the intelligence summary available to senators.

If she could not see what was happening, either she is too politically clumsy to be president, or she is part of the game being played on us.

[Sherry Harvey]

Mrs. Clinton, I read a quote from Mother Teresa, "It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the lonliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home". I would say, or in our own country. You have some excellent ideas. You could be the pencil Mother Teresa talked about, " a little pencil in the hand of God writing a love letter to the world." Give us a caring atttitude filled with love and we will show you a country filled with eagerness to work with you as our next president. "I slept and dreamed that life was all joy, I woke and saw that life is service, I served and saw that service was joy."(...also, Mother Teresa..........) and Mrs.Clinton, you will find joy in your service to this country if you show us God in your attitude and your handling of this election. God bless you in everything you do for good.