Howard Fineman: A generation ago, Vietnam blew up politics as we knew it. Why isn’t that happening now?
As we approach the fourth anniversary of "Shock and Awe," I keep waiting for the war in Iraq to blow up politics as we know it, the way the war in Vietnam did a generation ago. That hasn’t happened—at least not yet—and it's important to understand why. The main reason: Democrats haven’t fashioned a compelling (even to themselves) alternative to George W. Bush’s world view. Unless they do, they could lose in 2008.
Often in politics, what candidates DON’T say is more important than what they do. The Iraq issue is a prime example. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the antiwar crowd a major opening to exploit against her, in an interview with The New York Times. But the response from her main presidential rivals was telling silence.
I mean to make only half a joke when I say that the junior senator from New York has spent years, especially since 9/11, trying to morph herself into Golda Meir, Israel’s tough-as-nails matron turned military leader. Hillary chose a seat on Armed Services as her main committee assignment and has spent a lot more time at Fort Drum upstate than in TriBeCa downtown.
As other Democrats do, she says that she will vote to cut off funding for combat troops in 2008 if, as seems inevitable, certain benchmarks aren’t met by the Iraqi government. But, at the same time, she declared this week that she envisions keeping a substantial—though she didn’t say precisely how substantial—contingent of American troops in strategic spots around Iraq indefinitely.
The stakes are too high there, and the risks of regional instability too great, to do otherwise, she said. We need to protect the Kurds, contain Iran, guard Israel, keep the lid on Al Qaeda and maintain close watch from close range on the whole country even as we give up trying to prevent a full scale Sunni-Shia sectarian war.
In other words, we are there to stay....
Read entire article at Newsweek
Often in politics, what candidates DON’T say is more important than what they do. The Iraq issue is a prime example. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton gave the antiwar crowd a major opening to exploit against her, in an interview with The New York Times. But the response from her main presidential rivals was telling silence.
I mean to make only half a joke when I say that the junior senator from New York has spent years, especially since 9/11, trying to morph herself into Golda Meir, Israel’s tough-as-nails matron turned military leader. Hillary chose a seat on Armed Services as her main committee assignment and has spent a lot more time at Fort Drum upstate than in TriBeCa downtown.
As other Democrats do, she says that she will vote to cut off funding for combat troops in 2008 if, as seems inevitable, certain benchmarks aren’t met by the Iraqi government. But, at the same time, she declared this week that she envisions keeping a substantial—though she didn’t say precisely how substantial—contingent of American troops in strategic spots around Iraq indefinitely.
The stakes are too high there, and the risks of regional instability too great, to do otherwise, she said. We need to protect the Kurds, contain Iran, guard Israel, keep the lid on Al Qaeda and maintain close watch from close range on the whole country even as we give up trying to prevent a full scale Sunni-Shia sectarian war.
In other words, we are there to stay....