Hillary Rodham Kerry
EDITORIAL Hillary Rodham Kerry On October 2, 2003, Senator John Kerry voted for an $87 billion appropriation to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that was paired with...
...Obama could afford to take this stand because he was against the war from the beginning...
...On the other hand, the Republican nominee will have a lot better chance of winning the election if we're winning the war in Iraq...
...And second, Bush needs to succeed in preventing Iran and Syria from subverting our successes in Iraq...
...commander in Iraq as "General Betray Us," while also condemning attack ads from Max Cleland's 2002 Senate race and John Kerry's 2004 presidential run...
...Later that day, worried about the party's leftist activists, Clinton (along with 23 other Democrats) voted against the following resolution: To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces...
...But it is also to insist that the president throw his whole administration's weight behind the winning strategy he has put in place...
...Kerry's vote probably helped him overcome the Dean challenge in early 2004...
...Or perhaps not...
...Bush needs to prevent others in his own administration—generals (and some civilian leaders) who have given up on the war, or who are jealous of Petraeus, or both—from undermining Petraeus's efforts and Bush's strategy in various subtle ways, which, judging from reports from within the Pentagon, is not a trivial danger...
...Perhaps Hillary Clinton is right to think that siding with MoveOn against General Petraeus will help her fend off the challenge of Barack Obama...
...But Clinton has always been willing to do what it takes...
...It failed...
...That seems to have been accomplished for now...
...On September 20, 2007, Senator Hillary Clinton voted for a convoluted Democratic resolution to condemn (without naming it) the ad in which MoveOn.org referred to the U.S...
...Bush has to do what it takes to win the war...
...He presented his refusal to vote as a principled stand against such a petty dispute: "The focus of the United States Senate should be on ending this war, not on criticizing newspaper advertisements...
...Obama continued, "By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against this empty politics...
...Two weeks later, worried about Howard Dean's surging presidential campaign, Kerry joined only 11 other senators in voting against the $87 billion on final passage...
...Their fundamental responsibility is to support the president's resolve to see this effort through...
...Clinton will try to do what it takes to get elected...
...In this instance it required silence in the face of MoveOn's slander of Petraeus...
...This isn't the first time Hillary Clinton has voted for General Petraeus before voting against him...
...This is President Bush's task...
...military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that was paired with rescinding some Bush tax cuts...
...Kerry later offered the immortal defense that he had voted for the $87 billion before voting against it...
...William Kristol...
...They cannot be allowed to serve as safe havens for the training and transporting of enemy fighters, or as providers of advanced weapons used against our soldiers in Iraq...
...She voted to confirm him for his fourth star and his new position on January 26, 2007, knowing that he would be executing a counterinsurgency strategy backed up by a surge of troops...
...she is trying to win the Democratic nomination...
...She is not being serious about the war...
...It also involves two other things...
...Power Line's John Hinderaker noted: "So, in the Democrats' view, General Petraeus is just another politician and MoveOn's slander is just another campaign ad...
...The measure failed to get the requisite 60 votes...
...Obama refused to vote for or against the resolution condemning the MoveOn ad...
...It can't be an accident that Kerry and Edwards, two of the 12 senators who voted against the $87 billion on final passage, were the finalists in the Democratic race, while Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, who voted for the $87 billion, got knocked out early...
...Less than two months later, as the new strategy was just beginning to show results, she supported a motion to reverse course, begin to pull out troops, and abandon the new strategy...
...Hillary Clinton embarrassed herself last week, but Republicans shouldn't celebrate for too long...
...It involves beating back irresponsible congressional moves to undercut the effort...
...The Republican nominee in 2008 will be able to make the case that, as John McCain put it, "If you're not tough enough to repudiate a scurrilous, outrageous attack such as that, then I don't know how you're tough enough to be President of the United States...
...If one took the charges in the ad seriously, one would have to be in favor of relieving Petraeus of command...
...But Clinton has not called for that...
Vol. 13 • October 2007 • No. 3
