Standing Fast

John Judis has a good follow up to Michael Crowly's piece at the The New Republic on Hillary Clinton's real foreign policy. Judis makes the good point that Hillary has a very good reason she has not apologized for voting for the Iraq war: She still supports it.

"In spite of her support this month for a Senate resolution mandating withdrawal, Clinton is still a hawk on Iraq--and, in my opinion, is still flying blind. "

Clinton did vote for August 2008 withdrawal date in the Senate, but according to Judis her conception of the level of involvement we will still have in Iraq after that date is much more extensive that what most of her fellow Democrats probably think.

"Clinton's idea of a residual occupying force goes well beyond that of the recent Senate resolution. The resolution provides for a "limited number" of troops after the pullout date, which would be devoted to training and to "targeted counterterrorism operations." By contrast, Clinton's force would have larger geopolitical responsibilities, including the restraint of Iranian power. Clinton says she doesn't know how many U.S. troops her plan would require, or how many military bases would be required to house them. But Michael Gordon and Patrick Healy, who conducted the interview, noted that former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, who has developed a strikingly similar plan, estimates that 75,000 American troops would be needed to carry his plan out. That's about half of the current force stationed in Iraq."

Clinton would pull troops out the areas where the sectarian conflict is hottest, which is most of the major cities but on the whole the US would continue to occupy Iraq and play a major military role in the region for the indefinite future.

If Clinton cinches the Democratic nomination, she would in all likelihood run a Nixonian like "Peace with Honor" campaign, portraying the Republicans as a party in crisis who have failed to pacify Iraq. I can see the commercials now. The 1968 comparisons would be even more apt if McCain-who looks as happy about watching his political career crumble defending someone else's foreign policy disaster as Humphrey did-gets the GOP nomination.

Unlike some, I think she would win pretty handily, even against a Giuliani or Thompson. The American public sees Iraq as the GOP's war, just like Americans in 1968 saw Vietnam as the Democrats war. In 1968 the public did not trust the same party that got us into the conflict to get us out and I think it will be the same in 2008. But if we get stuck with four years of what Judis admits is a "Bush-lite" foreign policy, the terrible damage inflicted by the Bush administration in the realm of foreign policy will only be compounded and would likely have a disastrous effect on the Democratic Party.

Unlike Nixon-who secretly knew we could not achieve a victory in Vietnam-Crowly makes a convincing case that Hillary really does believe in a milder version of neo-conservatism that still believes in the value of the regular and offensive use of military force to enforce US will around the world. Crowly quotes here before the Council of Foreign Relations as saying

I don't know if blindness and arrogance is any better for the country than cynicism however.