2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: DLC's PNAC Document - Hillary Clinton On America's Strategy [View all]karynnj
(59,500 posts)In fact, due to millions spent against it, it is below 50% approval in the general population and many big donors, icluding at least one long associated with her are dead set against it.
In addition, she had the liberty to take ANY position, unlike on Iraq, where she had to vote yes or no -- when the bill itself was not portrayed when it was voted on as a first step to war. It was designed to be a tough vote. Imagine that it was used as Kerry used the threat of war to get something from Syria that would not otherwise have happened. In fact, until he then ordered us into war in March 2003, that was what he was doing. He did get inspectors in - and they spoke of no WMD. He did get Saddam to destroy his most modern missiles because they went too far. He COULD have then claimed credit for that - set up a strong long term monitoring system and then claimed credit for all of this. One motivation was said to be the sanctions weakening - had he acted as I described, he could also - in a move that the left would have had trouble with - have contrasted his action with the consequenses of those sanction that had been left in affect for a decade.
I fault the Clintons MORE for not speaking out in Jan - March as it became clear that Bush was preparing to take us to war -- even as the inspections (that had not existed for 4 years) showed there was no reason to do so.
It is fair to say that the IWR vote was wrong. It is unfair - and counterproductive to conflate what was known in October 2002 and what was known in March 2003. I get why Republicans now do that. I think it is the vestige of anger on that vote that leads Democrats to do so.