I couldn't have said it better myself.
The Explanation Hillary Clinton Owes
The truth is that Hillary Clinton is like most people. She's a coward. She looks around at everyone else and says, "What do they think I should think?"
And the Presidency is no place for a coward.
But that's exactly what we want. Someone whose hand we can force. Whether we know what we're doing or not. And, generally, we do not.
I opposed this war, up front. I thought and said that I thought it was a mistake, up front, for all of the concerns about Vietnam that so many people also shared. For whatever fucked up reasons, no matter how noble it often seems to liberate an oppressed people, they often clamor for repressive leaders, and find them preferable, at least, to foreign invaders, as seemed to have been the case in Vietnam. I attended protests. I argued against going when it was very unpopular to do so at a time when there was very little room to dissent. I was wrong about a lot. I didn't realize that the invasion would get the support that it got. I didn't anticipate the level of diverse, engaged and I must say, as I think about it, thoughtful debate on the matter that we got during this period, in contrast to the Vietnam War. I thought it was probably true that Saddam Hussein would have to be removed by force, but I thought that it should have come from an Iraqi led effort with, perhaps, overwhelming U.S. or international military support, which was the major impediment to it happening without U.S. involvement. I thought the U.S. should have engaged opposition parties and their alligned militias in an effort to covertly (or perhaps opnely?) plan an Iraqi led democratic revolution, which would have undercut political support for the insurgency, I believe, which is the oxygen off of which it feeds. But I opposed the war, even though it didn't tack with the current political mood.
And I am supporting this surge at a time when it is comparably unpopular. I'm not 100% sure that it will resolve this situation better. But I've not heard a better case than Frederick Kagan's case for the surge - that securing Iraq is a necessary prerequisite for a political resolution, that American forces are better prepared to support Iraqis in doing that, and that Iraqis need and their government is clearly requesting our assistance in securing Baghdad for that purpose - from those who oppose it as of yet. I just have a much stronger sense of responsibility for this war and for my thoughts on policy matters than Ms. Clinton does.
I'm not concerned with the fact that so many people, like Hillary Clinton, did not. Many people did what they thought was best. Many people did what they thought everyone else thought was best. And God knows I've had my moments of cowardice. Sometimes some pretty serious moments of cowardice. But I don't respect this kind of self-righteous cowardice that holds tight both to its own notions and to the political winds in the pursuit of power, either. And I know it is a dangerous instinct for a politician, nevertheless a President, to have. It is a dangerous dance between an ego driven public looking to absolve itself of responsibility for its popular notions, for the zeitgeist, as Richard Cohen says, and the tragedies they produce, and an ego driven leader willing and ready to appease those egos.
I am learning that the most important form of courage in the world that most people lack is the courage to admit when you are wrong. It is not President Bush alone who struggles with this kind of courage. It is all of us. On every side of every important issue that we face. And exactly the reason why we should not be trusted with the power or the assertion of the right to constantly force our neighbors' hands. And exactly the reason why liberal democracies, liberal democratic cultures, and people with the most genuine liberal democratic commitments are the most authentically strong amongst us.
Hillary Clinton is the alter ego to President Bush. She is someone whose self-righteous unwillingness and lack of practice and developed capacity for self-reflection makes her dangerously ego-driven, constantly rationalizing any decision in the name of being popular and pursuing her political ambitions.
We like Hillary Clinton because she is us. She's a coward who is attuned to our self-righteous selective memory and our willingness and desire to force peoples' hands to get what we want when we want it. She embodies our cyncism. And she forestalls our need to self-reflect and challenge our own assumptions about the world and ourselves.
Hillary Clinton is our egos working so desperately not to face our consciences that perhaps it is not President Bush, after all, who is alone responsible for this messy war.
It is us.
Love,
Ben
