Rage, Smoke, and Mirrors

For those of you who don't know what Hillary Clinton's voting record is when it comes to the war, Tim Russert called her on it, brought to the Log Cabin by Raw Story. I would like to, hopefully briefly, discuss a couple of the points brought up by the video.

The first is, and I cannot stress this enough, Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the war "with conviction." She believed that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, in the face of whatever evidence or testimony that may have existed to the contrary.

The second is her mention of "presidential action." Touching this particular theme should be like touching the third rail for a presidential candidate, especially after Bush's excessive disregard for the separation of powers and his ever-expanding definition of presidential authority. Anyone on the Democratic side of the aisle that supports this idea should not have a viable chance for the Democratic nomination.

The third is her notion that we must assign responsibility, but focus on the problems that the country is facing now. I find this argument to be slightly disingenuous as if she had opposed the war from the beginning, perhaps some of the more negative ramifications might have been mitigated, for instance, less of a significant portion of the Iraqi population having fled to surrounding countries, or perhaps a few hundred thousand of them might not have become casualties. However, if the American people choose to hold her responsible for supporting this geopolitical shell game by making her the Democratic presidential candidate, perhaps we should consider abrogating civics classes.