A Concern About Hillary Clinton’s Judgment
Hillary Clinton might make a fine Secretary of State. For the sake of the country, I certainly hope that she does. However, in the world of political leaders, a leader’s past judgments are often a good guide to his or her future performance. Consider the following that I quoted at NoSpeedBumps in Feb, 2007 just as the surge was starting:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a 90-day deadline to start pulling American troops from Iraq.
… “Now it’s time to say the redeployment should start in 90 days or the Congress will revoke authorization for this war,” the New York senator said in a video on her campaign Web site, repeating a point included in a bill she introduced on Friday.
In the same post, to this I wrote:
And then what? Watch the humanitarian disaster unfold? Watch Iraq become a failed state overrun with rival militias, Muslim fundamentalists, and Al Qaeda terrorists?
It is really difficult to figure out what to do in Iraq, and every one of us that has an opinion could be wrong. But to me, whatever the solution to Iraq, to start withdrawing within three months is not it.
I am not saying that I am always right in my judgment on political issues. In fact, when first hearing of the proposed surge in Dec, 2006, I strongly opposed it.
After presumably thinking very hard about this issue for a month after the surge idea was put out there - Hillary Clinton not only opposed the surge - but she decided in Jan. 2007 that we should start leaving Iraq:
Ms Clinton said she opposed George Bush’s plans to send a ’surge’ of more than 20,000 extra troops to Iraq. … “I’m for redeploying our troops out of Baghdad and eventually out of Iraq so we can make sure that they’re not in the midst of a civil war.”
Well I was wrong, and this is probably one of my biggest misses in judgment calls on this blog since I started it four years ago. But I am a lone blogger - not the new Secretary of State. Hillary had numerous experts and seasoned political pros (even her husband - an ex-president!) to discuss the surge idea with before formulating her final policy position. But in the end she got it dead wrong.
Hillary Clinton made a huge error in judgment for a national leader. Not that I expect her to admit this, it just raises concerns about what is heading our way in terms of new foreign policies.
January 24th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
It is widely acknowledged that it was not the surge that calmed things down in Iraq. It has the combination of targeted killings and the bribes we gave the insurgents to not shoot at our troops (Sons of Iraq and the like). So, maybe Hillary didn’t get it wrong.
Secretary of State serves the president. It is unlikely that Secretary Clinton can do anything important without approval of her boss. Any misjudgment would not be hers alone. Change in the foreign policy is not likely to be a high priority in the current economic climate. Domestic agenda will be front and center for the next year or two.
January 25th, 2009 at 2:33 am
nobody,
Yes, it was not the surge alone. But the surge was part of a renewed effort of throwing more US military might and creative tactics at the problem rather than just give up and leave.
For the record, a year later Hillary seemed to agree with the surge after the fact and seemed to even try to take credit for it working. She said:
“The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Senator Obama, Senator Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along.”
I give the Iraqi government little credit for the rapid turnaround. Hillary was being disingenuous by downplaying US military efforts.
So if she had supported the surge from the start she would have been right - and if she opposed it from the start she would have been right.
Yes, Hillary will have a lot of checks on her. But it is still of significance to look at her past judgments on important policy decisions.
January 25th, 2009 at 4:45 am
Iraq presents a quandry doesn’t it?
Al Quaeda is Sunni.
The minority in central Iraq is Sunni, like Saddam was in his later days.
Iran, and the majority in Iraq, are Shia.
The Kurds are already acting as their own de facto independent state, replete with their own forces and flags in NE Iraq.
Modaqtar Al-Sadr has told his militia, a Shia one, to “stand down” and go underground for the time being, waiting for when we leave, when the blood will really start flowing. Many of his devotee’s are (suprise!) in the police forces and army. He probably, at his command, has the most military might in that nation as we leave. His father, uncles, and other family members were killed in the past and somehow this confers him a lot of spiritual resonance with the Shias there in Iraq.
The “surge” as Ive read it in a book, was a cynical ploy by Heritage Institute neo-conservatives to pay off insurgents not to fight us, and make a “Potempkin” situation for the last year and several months of Iraq so that when we withdrwaw (politically inevitable if we economically get into a real depression), the GOP can blame the Democrat in the White House for our “failure” in Iraq. I’d like not to believe that, but neo-cons are very cynical creatures.
The root problems in Iraq, the fact that its factioned in three parts (Sunni, Shia, Kurds) with two subgroups (Christian and Yezhedis) is a big problem.
Then there are the divisions within the divisions. Nutbar Al-Quaeda which are also Sunni. Many former Baathists more associate with the Sunni, even though many appear to be privately kinda secular people–like Hussein was.
2)Various Shia clerics jockeying for position, and jockeying for favor with Iran……some nationally patriotic to the idea of a concept of an Iraqi nation, and some not. Iran is looking to influence events from the outside amongst various shia factions.
3)Kurds, who want their own country in the Northeast of the nation.
If we leave absolutely and big fighting starts…………………….Iran could move in on the place and take it over. We would be stuck in the Gulf with our fleet trying to fight Iran from afar if we leave. Like Tito in Yugoslavia, Hussein was a SOB, but he did keep that nation in fear enough that the various factions didn’t slaughter EACH OTHER.
700 Billion over there so far, and we honestly might have screwed the place up worse than it was before, weakened it before a growing Iranian threat, helped Al-Quaeda (Sunnis) really recruit nut-jobs from across the middle east and given them some real-world terrorist experience, strengthened Iran’s ties with Hezbollah and other underground terrorist organizations through the war’s positive effect on extremist propaganda, and not really made Israel any safer (Iraq really wasn’t the threat to Israel, Iran was).
There is no easy or positive (or cheap) answer to it over there. The left will always have Bush to blame for this, no matter how bad the Obammessiah does with these factions. The whole thing is pretty icky. Our troops have got to be getting tired of being stuck in that part of the world also, although Im sure its more pleasant than the mountains of Afghanistan.
January 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
miles,
It is hard to know how it will play out now that we are apparently leaving soon. We stabilized the place, helped enable several elections, and trained hundreds of thousands of Iraqi security forces, so there is not much else we can do except continue on in various advisory roles. It is up to the Iraqis not to make a disaster out of all of it.
I think it will partly depend on the reliability of the Iraqi officer corp developed over these years. If they revert to tribalism or align in sectarian ways, then Iraq will have big problems. I personally think that the Iraqi security forces are so large and connected enough to the national leadership that Iraq will hold together without a civil war (as long as they leave the Kurds alone).
I don’t think that the worst case scenarios, like civil war or Iran moving in, will occur. The Iraqi national government has oil money to pay for their security.