Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The Democrats and Iraq

One would think from listening to the Democrat candidates for president that they are all for pulling out of Iraq now! Of course we all know that means all military personal, every last one of them, and they will all be coming home ASAP. But the dirty little secret is that whoever the Democrat nominee (i.e. Hilary Clinton), she will not do any such thing. But you would not know this from the mainstream media’s reporting of the campaign. Nor do the Democrats want their left-wing base to know this.

I’ve read this before, and Rush has mentioned it numerous times, but a Washington Post article yesterday means it may be getting out beyond a few of us right-wingers. Clinton was campaigning in Iowa recently and in a 10-page news release her campaign dedicated all but one paragraph to troop withdrawal. Here was that one paragraph:

But toward the end, Clinton noted that it would be "a great worry for our country" if Iraq "becomes a breeding ground for exporting terrorists, as it appears it already is." So she would "order specialized units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region." U.S. troops would also train and equip Iraqi forces "to keep order and promote stability in the country, but only to the extent we believe such training is actually working." And she might deploy other forces to protect the Kurdish region in the north, she said, "to protect the fragile but real democracy and relative peace and security that has developed there."

The author mentions the Baker-Hamilton Report, which is basically what this is, and eventually this is where Bush wants to get to as well. However, he doesn’t want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory to get there too soon. Democrat primary voters don’t want to hear any of this, so Clinton won’t be playing this up anytime soon. I wonder if her allies in the MSM will play along.

1 comment:

Devang said...

It's not about Clinton wanting to play this up or not, what she said is not very different in any meaningful way from the Reed-Levin plan that's being debated in the senate right now as far as military operations beyond 2007 go. The whole Democratic party is behind this, including the senators running for president, and including the anti-war moveon.org and other such groups who are camping out on the Senate side of the Capitol.

There are more extensive proposals, but they have clearly been distinguished from each other, on the liberal blogs for one, and even during the debates. Even in those extreme cases (Richardson, Kucinich,..), they leave plenty of room for UN peacekeepers.

The media has taken a vacation on this one, unless you can point me to an article pointing out the differences between the Republican candidates on Iraq that goes beyond spin.