Thursday, October 12, 2006
The Whisper in Her Ear
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton put forth her positions on
No obvious moon-battery here, and reasonable sounding. She’s made some good points, she’s someone to at least hear out, doesn’t it sound?
Forgive me for a certain skepticism about how genuine are Sen. Clinton’s convictions about the threats to National Security, how she would lead as Commander in Chief, how she would direct Iraq policy differently than the Bush Administration.
More importantly, how would she make judgments between the eternally opposed perspectives of the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon? Does she even recognize that these three spheres are in covert (and often overt) battle with each other? Is she already a party to the internecine warfare?
One clue is here prescription, described as “Step 2: Diplomacy:”
The second thing that needs to happen is an international public gathering of the parties in the region. Right now, we have sort of private conversations with all these different groups, with the exception of
So, there is no understanding. The Turks are massing troops because they're scared to death about the Kurds and the infiltration. We know what the Iranians are doing. The other Sunni countries are playing their double game. And we're basically sort of watching it.
Our failure to have even backdoor talks with
Here we go again. All we need is an “international public gathering of the parties in the region.” Kind of sounds like a UN solution, doesn’t it? Sen. Clinton maintains that the reason all of our various private and public conversations with all these interested parties (excepting our sworn enemies of course), is one of a failure in “bringing them to any kind of resolution.”
Has the Junior Senator not had a chance to get briefed up on the UN and other natter-ma-bob organizations? Can she really be that naïve?
The problem is with her premise, which fails on multiple counts. Nations conduct international diplomacy as a helpful but largely irrelevant backdrop for whatever practical steps they take behind the scenes. Nations lie, cheat, misrepresent, and try to manipulate foreign and domestic public opinion. Communist Dictatorships and other autocratic and fascists regimes, do it at orders of magnitude more.
The Senator Clinton, in just the next breath suggests that, despite our neglect in opening private conversation with them, “We know what the Iranians are doing.” Senator, might you go ahead and state what that is? I know I know, but I sure would like to believe you do. I don’t, because I know by not saying, you don’t really believe whatever you’d say, and whatever you’d have to say publicly, you wouldn’t agree with at all.
Backdoor talks with
As to her first or third steps, they’re unserious and distort the realities on the ground in
She states that the
She also slanders the many very brave and resolute Iraqi Army officers and soldiers, 350,000 by her own assessment, as avoiding the difficult work of building an Army and protecting their new freedoms:
Because they are basically able to just allow us to take the brunt of the impact.
There are certain groups of the Iraqis that will fight, but the vast majority of the 350,000 are not prepared to stand up and fight for
That must be news to the many thousands of Iraqis (but not 650,000) who have died thus far for their country and the preservation of their new democracy. It contradicts, of course, what
All that said: If these arguments came from any lesser figure politically than the ambitious Junior Senator from
But this particular one is not some common, ordinary Joe or Jill Senator. She’s an intelligent, smart, ambitious woman. She has a very specific ambition, one that mandates she establish a kind of permanent standing, as a reluctantly pro-War, middle of the road, Security minded Democrat.
Unbelievably, I find myself recalling Old Man Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life:
Now, if this young man of twenty-eight was a common, ordinary yokel, I'd say he was doing fine. But George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel. He's an intelligent, smart, ambitious young man — who hates his job – who hates the Building and Loan almost as much as I do. A young man who's been dying to get out on his own ever since he was born. A young man... the smartest one of the crowd, mind you, a young man who has to sit by and watch his friends go places, because he's trapped.
Sen. Clinton’s public stances on
I suppose it’s a crowning irony to suggest that It’s a Wonderful Life, one of Frank Capra’s greatest films, could shed any light to that complicated personality that is Sen. Hillary Clinton. The comparison is awkward, the details incomplete, and we haven’t yet seen the end of the story.
But let me suggest, Sen. Clinton has been cooped up playing a role necessitated by what she’s inherited. She does hate this old Savings and Loan, almost as much as our enemies, for the compromises and sacrifices she’s had to accept to survive, and persevere.
The rest of the crowd, all the little and anonymous loan recipients, sold out to Potter, taking 50 cents on the dollar. But still, she has to hold out against the whisper in her ear, that says, “Sell now! While you can still get something out of it!”
Because to frame herself as tough on defense, and strong on National Security, she needs that image more than she needs the more immediate gain she’d get from joining her political friends.
She’s a kind of George Bailey, I’ suggest, but one I think who listened to the whispering voice of Mr. Potter. Only, she can’t let the other investors know, she gave up her stake to Potter a long time ago.
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