Conservative Defends Hillary from Obama

Conservatives should rise to defend Hillary Clinton from Barack Obama’s assault on her Iraq War authorization vote. Why, my readers will ask, should conservatives support Hillary in any way? The answer is quite simple: our nation’s survival may depend on such action. By that I do not mean that supporting Hillary in and of itself will save the nation, but rather finding common ground for agreement on that one issue, the rightfulness of a war authorization vote, will help liberals and conservatives alike to recognize that some situations require military intervention, and WMD development or concealment is one such situation.

Yes, Hillary has flip-flopped on her support for the Iraq War as her 2008 presidential campaign has advanced, and yes, her criticisms of President Bush’s handling of the war have been shrill at times. She merits the conservative disdain she has reaped through such behavior and calculated political maneuvering. However, conservatives and fair-minded liberals should consider the consequences of not defending Hillary’s vote to authorize the use of military force to enforce UN Resolution 1441 against Saddam Hussein’s reported WMD stockpiles, especially in light of the rapidly approaching showdown with Iran over its uranium enrichment efforts.

Yesterday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated the Iran will “never abandon” its nuclear ambitions regardless of how many UN resolutions or sanctions are employed to thwart the Iranian nuclear program. In the face of such recalcitrance, strong and decisive leadership will be needed, and undoubtedly there will be future votes in the House and Senate to approve or disapprove of the use of military force against Iran. I am certainly not implying that Hillary would provide such leadership if elected president. My views on her politics and personality are known to Capital Cloak readers. Her disdain for the military is well known. However, if Barack Obama succeeds in convincing a majority of the Democratic Party, or worse, a majority of all American voters, that Hillary’s war authorization vote was “irresponsible and naïve,” as he has characterized it, it will signal that even when presented with overwhelming intelligence from every allied nation worldwide, America might likewise consider military action against future foes like Iran as “irresponsible and naïve.” That form of national paralysis could prove fatal in confrontations with determined enemies.

Specifically, Obama chastised Hillary for voting to authorize a war “without asking how we were going to get out.” That is an opportunistic argument coming as it does from one who has never been in position to make such difficult decisions. Obama, of course, was not a senator yet when the Iraq War vote took place, and was not privy to the intelligence documents that the colleagues he now derides as naïve were briefed on prior to committing troops to Iraq. For any nation embarking upon a war effort, the way out is obvious: win, and win decisively. The eventual outcome of war is not perfectly predictable, and history proves that war strategies often change mid-course, usually after initial campaigns meet with unexpected or underestimated resistance. Perhaps Obama should study the initial battles of our own Civil War, paying particular attention to the overconfidence and short-sighted planning of the Union’s early generals. That war, which eventually ended slavery in America, was entered into by the Union army with virtually no prior planning for “how we were going to get out.” Does Obama consider Abraham Lincoln to have been “irresponsible and naïve” to enter a war with poor prior planning?

I suspect that Obama is glad today that Lincoln ignored his critics at the time and pressed forward in a just cause. Obama, despite being a senator from Illinois, is certainly no Lincoln when it comes to perseverance in wars for freedom. Or perhaps he does not consider the Iraqi right to freedom to be as inalienable as his own.

In the case of Iraq, winning the war involved more than removing Saddam Hussein, a task that was even simpler than our military planners projected. Removing Saddam and accounting for his WMD were merely the great opening battles of the war for Iraqi freedom (hence the name Operation Iraqi Freedom). The way out of Iraq, which Obama and unfortunately now Hillary as well fail to see is an Iraqi parliament capable of sustaining and defending itself from domestic and foreign efforts to topple it. In that sense, Obama and others should limit their criticism to the fact that our goals in Iraq have not been reached rather than condemn the initial decision to act against Saddam’s defiance toward the UN over his well-documented WMD programs.

It is no coincidence that former Secretary of State and retired General Colin Powell, who recently claimed in dramatic Monday morning quarterback fashion to have urged President Bush no to invade Iraq despite the overwhelming intelligence detailing Saddam’s WMD facilities and ambitions, has been advising Obama on military and foreign policy issues. Whereas criticisms of the decision to invade Iraq from Obama are truly “irresponsible and naïve,” they merely reflect the influence of General Powell.

There is clearly little common ground between conservatives and Hillary Clinton. After all, she burned whatever rickety bridges may have once existed when she blamed the “vast right wing conspiracy” for damaging her husband’s self-destructive presidency. Yet when a political opportunist like Obama criticizes Hillary for voting to remove an oppressive dictator and secure the WMD the world was convinced he possessed, we should defend her for making that decision. Despite her current efforts to cast herself as a candidate who would work to end the war, she was right to vote as she did. At least in Hillary’s case America knows that in a sobering moment with long-term consequences, she once voted to eliminate a rogue nation’s WMD programs. Obama, on the other hand, never has faced such a decision but we can conclude from his criticisms and General Powell’s influence that were Obama to be president, he would be loathe to act when facing the threat of WMD acquisition by rogue nations.

For conservatives, neither of these candidates is politically appealing, but Obama’s contagious depiction of Hillary or anyone else who voted to authorize the Iraq War as “irresponsible and naïve” must be prevented from infecting our future decisions when faced with similar or more dangerous threats, such as Iran. Liberals and conservatives can disagree on a host of social, moral, and economic issues, but on the issue of preventing radical Islamic regimes from enriching uranium and proliferating nuclear weapons or technology, there must be unity and shared determination. Regardless of her current views of the Iraq War, Hillary was right to authorize it, as was President Bush to request it, based on the intelligence available at that time. President Bush or his successor, Democrat or Republican, will face the decision to act against Iran since Iran has made it clear it will never halt its uranium enrichment. Obama’s attacks on Hillary’s war vote are irresponsibly making it more difficult for a president to make a convincing case for future military action of any kind to Americans.

Having never faced a difficult decision like a war vote, Obama can conveniently profit from hindsight and impugn the responsibility and motives of those who voted for the Iraq War. Of Obama I would ask the same question I posed to General Powell in a previous post: what further evidence would you have needed to convince you that action against Saddam was necessary given the intelligence already in hand? There is no more clear evidence of Obama’s disingenuous criticism of Hillary on this issue than the words of Obama’s consultant on foreign policy and military issues, General Powell. Powell himself made the case for war to the UN, including the following dramatic statement:

…We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?

The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.

I’m still waiting to see a news headline that reads, “Obama Calls Own Adviser Powell ‘Irresponsible and Naïve’ for Launching Iraq War.” After all, the entire House and Senate voted to authorize war based on what leaders such as Powell recommended at the time. If Hillary was “irresponsible and naïve” for following Powell’s advice, Obama must by default be equally irresponsible and naïve for taking current advice from the same source.

For conservatives and liberals alike, it is important to separate the rightfulness of the decision to invade Iraq from the subsequent execution of the war or its current status. There is always room for improvement in the handling of wars, and the one constant of conflict is that human error is inescapable. However, the drive to impugn the motives of those who voted to disarm and depose Saddam Hussein will only serve to cripple our national resolve to take similar actions in the future when necessary. Taking Ahmadinejad’s words at face value, such actions will be necessary again soon.

Hillary gets a lot of things wrong, but deserves positive reinforcement when she does something that is in the best interest of America and global security. Her Iraq War vote was the right thing to do at the right time. If conservatives do not defend such action by a liberal when it is hypocritically and opportunistically attacked, then we will have only ourselves to blame if fewer liberals choose to make sound national security decisions in the future.


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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iraq War Vote, Colin Powell, 2008 Campaign, Presidential Candidates, Conservatives, Liberals

Colin Powell's Oscar-Worthy UN Iraq Act

Colin Powell, once the military name most respected by everyday Americans, is becoming increasingly synonymous with Hillary Clinton's well earned moniker of “America’s Greatest Iraq Monday Morning Quarterback.” Hillary, who joined her husband in condemning Saddam Hussein and claiming that nothing short of military action would remove the threat he posed to the world, voted to authorize President Bush’s decision to act militarily to disarm and remove Hussein from power. Now that she is running for the Democratic nomination in a party largely controlled by MoveOn.org and other radical anti-war groups, however, Hillary made the outrageously disingenuous claim that “if she knew then what she knows now,” as president in 2003 she never would have authorized a war in Iraq. The accounts of Hillary’s pre-war and pre-2006 press conferences and Senate speeches are legion, and they all contain a shared theme: Saddam possessed WMD, was unstable, and the security of the United States and the Middle East demanded that action be taken against him due to his continued violation of UN resolutions. The Monday morning quarterbacking Hillary now employs in her harangues against the Bush administration’s Iraq War policies is hypocritical but not surprising from the presidential candidate looking to establish ideological roots wherever fertile political soil is found, but Monday morning quarterbacking about the invasion of Iraq now made public by Colin Powell was less expected and in some ways more bereft of character than Hillary’s hypocrisies.

Hillary is a power-coveting politician, and as such her approach to support or opposition to the Iraq War vacillates depending on which way the political wind blows each day. This is not to suggest that her Gumby-like stretching into publicly desired positions is right, but rather it is expected. Colin Powell, on the other hand, as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and an integral figure in the previous Gulf War to contain Saddam’s aggressions, was considered by many to be a man of honor, integrity, and military expertise. However, his Monday morning quarterbacking of the president’s Iraq War decision as reported in yesterday’s UK Sunday Times revealed a level of hypocrisy previously unknown to the American public. From the UK Times story:

THE former American secretary of state Colin Powell has revealed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today’s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.

“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”

Powell has become increasingly outspoken about the level of violence in Iraq, which he believes is in a state of civil war. “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now.”

He added: “It is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States.” All the military could do, Powell suggested, was put “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew”.

…According to Powell: “We have to face the reality of the situation that is on the ground and not what we would want it to be.” He believes that, even if the military surge has been a partial success in areas such as Anbar province, where Sunni tribes have turned on Al-Qaeda, it has not been accompanied by the vital political and economic “surge” and reconciliation process promised by the Iraqi government.

The assertion that Powell tried valiantly to avoid the war by talking President Bush out of an invasion is, to say the least, difficult to swallow. If Powell’s statement in Colorado was true, then perhaps Powell could explain what arm-twisting or blackmail was employed to force him into personally appearing before the UN Security Council in February 2003 as Secretary of State to present the administration’s case for war against Saddam Hussein. If Powell felt so strongly that invading Iraq was a mistake at the time, why is it that only now, after 4 years of a war he lent his personal credibility to in order to garner international support, does Powell mention that he was actually opposed to the war before it began? Who can forget the mountains of evidence Powell brought to bear in support of war against Saddam? Surveillance photos of WMD sites, recorded testimony of intelligence sources, financial transaction records revealing weapons funding in violation of UN resolutions while starving Iraqis received none of the food assistance the UN funds were supposed to purchase under the “Oil for Food” program. The list of documents brought to bear is staggering, and Powell eloquently explained the danger to the world that would result from allowing Saddam to ignore UN resolutions and continue his quest for WMD.

Powell’s case was so compelling that a coalition of allies voted to support the invasion and lent proportional military support. So credible was Powell’s UN testimony that Democrats and Republicans, reviewing the same intelligence data, voted overwhelmingly to authorize the invasion, with much bipartisan pontification about the potential threat to the world from Saddam’s WMD ambitions. Powell’s recent claim that he tried in vain to prevent the war lacks any corroborative evidence to support it. If Powell was as morally opposed to invasion as he now claims, then his performance at the UN Security Council was Oscar-worthy. A stronger case has never been made for war by someone who allegedly opposed it.

For the complete text of Powell’s testimony to the UN Security Council, click here. The following are brief selected excerpts from Powell’s command performance. Decide for yourselves if these were the words of a man who supposedly tried hard to talk the president out of war with Iraq:

The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are U.S. sources. And some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.

…I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling....

…Everything we have seen and heard indicates that, instead of cooperating actively with the inspectors to ensure the success of their mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing.

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.

…Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors.

…Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

…Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately.

…We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he's determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not some day use these weapons at a time and the place and in the manner of his choosing at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?

The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.

It is equally curious that, if Powell’s new claim is to be believed, he was not convinced by the military and intelligence data he personally presented to the UN Security Council. One wonders what further evidence Powell wanted in order to quell his supposedly troubled conscience on the issue of invasion. How many UN resolution violations was Powell willing to tolerate? How many satellite images of WMD storage and production facilities did he need to convince him that action was needed? It is telling that Powell offered no explanation for why he allegedly opposed the invasion, limiting his condemnation of the Iraq War to the current results rather than the situation and available information at the time the decision to invade was reached. Perhaps it speaks volumes about Powell’s lack of qualifications for high office that allegedly he alone was unconvinced by overwhelming intelligence data from virtually every international agency. It is the ultimate Monday morning quarterbacking for Powell to look at today’s news reports from Iraq and claim that he foresaw the current situation and if only the president had listened to Powell, the violence and casualties could have been avoided.

There were many options available to Powell once he allegedly realized he could not change the president’s mind. He could have spoken to a reporter on condition of anonymity and leaked the story of his own opposition to the invasion and kept his job as Secretary of State. He could have resigned as Secretary of State in protest and made it clear to the press and public why he was resigning. Even later, when he resigned long after the invasion, he cited personal reasons like family time for his decision rather than publicly challenge a decision to invade a foreign nation. Instead, Powell mounted no principled opposition to a plan he claims to have argued against. Where is the integrity and honor in that?

The UK Times pointed out that Powell has consulted twice with the Barack Obama campaign, and that Obama’s position on an immediate withdrawal from Iraq has been revised to more closely dovetail with Hillary’s desired gradual troop force reductions. It is telling that Powell, who claims to have attempted to talk President Bush out of invading Iraq, is not counseling Obama to demand an immediate and complete removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. If the invasion was a mistake, as Powell allegedly asserted to the president already in 2002-2003, then why is Powell not recommending a complete reversal of the decision by “bringing the troops home” as quickly as possible? Certainly the anti-war wing of Obama’s party demands this, so why counsel the young, inexperienced Senator to call for gradual troop reductions or redeployment in the region?

While Powell uses clever language in describing the U.S. military effort in Iraq as putting “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew,” Americans should keep in mind that Powell agreed to lend his personal credibility to placing the stew on the stove and turning up the heat when he presented the government’s case for war in Iraq. He should apply his own words when it comes to his claim that he tried to prevent the war and put a lid on it.

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Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Iraq War, Monday Morning Quarterback, War Opposition, UN Security Council, Saddam Hussein, War Critics, Bush Administration