Hillary Clinton expresses regret for 2002 Iraq vote

December 19, 2006

Of all the likely 2008 presidential aspirants, Hillary Clinton seemed like the lone holdout. On current and forward looking policy, Clinton is right there with the rest of her Senate Dem colleagues, supporting the Reed-Levin proposal. But looking back, Clinton appears to be the only ’08 Dem who voted for the 2002 Iraq resolution, but has been reluctant to express regret for it.

John Edwards wrote his now-famous “I was wrong” op-ed, and John Kerry has disavowed the vote, but Clinton, while being critical of the war and the president’s handling of the crisis, has not, as far as I can tell, been apologetic about the vote. In some Dem circles, Clinton’s disinclination is a problem.

With this in mind, I expected this to go over a little better.

As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to assess a possible presidential candidacy and the contours of a Democratic nomination fight, she has taken another step away from her 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq by saying that she “wouldn’t have voted that way” if she knew everything she knows now.

Clinton has often been asked if she regrets her vote authorizing military action and she usually answers that question with an artful dodge, saying that she accepts responsibility for the vote and suggesting that if the Senate had all the information it has today (no WMD, troubled post-war military planning, etc. . .), there would never have been a vote on the Senate floor.

However, she has never gone as far as some of her potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination — who also voted for the war — and called her vote a mistake or declared that she would have cast her vote differently with all the facts presently available to her — until now.

This morning on NBC’s “Today” show, Sen. Clinton was asked about her 2002 vote and offered a slightly evolved answer. “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote,” she said in her usual refrain before adding, “and I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way.”

This is, I thought, fairly close to what the senator’s critics wanted to hear. In a sense, it’s a question of judgment — it’s one thing to make a mistake on an important vote, but it’s something else to refuse to acknowledge the mistake. In this sense, Clinton did the right thing by distancing herself from the 2002 vote.

So, Clinton can begin healing rifts with some of her more progressive critics? Maybe not.

Will Bunch is a good example of how Clinton’s comments were received by many on the left.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has changed her tune on Iraq. But just slightly. And to our ears, she’s still way off-key. […]

[W]hat she wouldn’t do is what some of her Democratic White House rivals have done: Admit that her vote was a mistake, and admit it in the clearest language possible. […]

That said, it’s not too still not too late for Hillary Clinton to win over at least some anti-war Democrats. And it’s not that hard, either. Just admit in no uncertain terms that you made a mistake in 2002, and why — and then fight like hell on the Senate floor to get us out of that mess over there, ASAP.

Maybe I’m being too easy on Clinton, but it seems her position is in line with where John Kerry was in 2004, and I voted for him with some enthusiasm. That said, of course, the war is a far greater nightmare now, so perhaps the opposition should, accordingly, be more intense.

I’m curious what you guys think of this. Were Clinton’s comments on the Today show progress, or will she have to fully repudiate her 2002 vote in order to garner even a modicum of support from long-time opponents of the war?

The only thing of practical consequence at the moment is how she votes going forward. If she believes that her vote for the Iraq war was a mistake; takes away the lesson the Bush can’t be trusted and then proceeds to conduct herself accordingly that would be all to the better. If she is simply saying what she thinks the electorate wants to hear, the my response is a big yawn.

  • It would be nice if the default position would be voting no on war unless overwhelming evidence shows its necessity. In this case, they were given some wrong and a lot of incomplete info. Clinton and others should have voted no by reflex until they were totally convinced. But 2002 was a weird terrorist-driven time because of 9/11. I don’t think that vote would be a deal-breaker, but I think a repudiation of it now is.

  • Were Clinton’s comments on the Today show progress, or will she have to fully repudiate her 2002 vote in order to garner even a modicum of support from long-time opponents of the war?

    If she’s the candidate, she’ll get a modicum of support, but like John Kerry before her, she seems determined to steer some kind of middle course in order not to seem too “liberal” (shudder) to voters who would never vote for her anyway. I can accept that a senator could have voted for the resolution, but now that we all know that the Iraq adventure was based on a mixture of lies and wishful thinking, I’d be more enthusiastic if there were a little outrage, publicly expressed, on the part of the suckers who bought into it.

  • Maybe I’m being too easy on Clinton, but it seems her position is in line with where John Kerry was in 2004, and I voted for him with some enthusiasm.

    It’s 2 years later. The cost of that ill-considered vote is even more obvious today. Personally, I’m Hillary-ambivalent, but this seems wishy-washy too little, painfully too late. She has to do a lot better than this if she hopes to persuade me into her column.

  • I can accept formerly pro Iraq war types Walter “Freedom Fries” Jones or John Murtha who said they were wrong and did something about it.

    Now that support for the war has dropped to 30-31%, HRC’s handlers have given her the okay to be slightly anti-war. In her mind, the 2002 Iraq vote is just small stone on the road to becoming the first US female prez.

    As someone here pointed out, HRC is a weathervane albeit a very slow one.

    Again, I’m not against her because she’s female or a Clinton. There has always been something about her personality I never liked and I think I’ve finally figured it out. She seems to be letting her ambitions override any moral sense she has. Always for the quick expedient fix instead of the more beneficial (for the nation) but more painful moral stand because taking a stand will retard her career goals. Not willing to sacrifice her ambitions for the greater good. She is, to my simple eyes, the distilled essence of ability, careerism, ambition and cynicism minus heart and “soul.”

  • I’m not sold on Hillary or Kerry, but frankly I think her mea culpa is better than his. She said clearly that knowing what she knows now, she would have voted differently. Given exactly that set up in the last election, Kerry said even had he known at the time of the vote what he knew in the campaign, he would have voted the same way anyway. On this one issue, I have trouble understanding why the progressives prefer Kerry to Clinton. Both were either too crassly political or too intellectually inferior to Dumya (of all people!) that they were suckered into believing what most progressives outside the Beltway — with much less inside information — knew to be a Big Lie.

  • “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote… and I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way” -Hillary Clinton

    “That said, it’s not too still not too late for Hillary Clinton to win over at least some anti-war Democrats. And it’s not that hard, either. Just admit in no uncertain terms that you made a mistake in 2002, and why — and then fight like hell on the Senate floor to get us out of that mess over there, ASAP.” -Will Bunch

    Two distinctions, one or both of which may be crucial:

    1. Hillary is *not* admitting she fucked up; she’s admitting she didn’t know in 2002 what she knows in 2006.

    There is a bit of a difference between the two, to put it mildly. And she’s sure as hell not copping to the shitty judgment. A bunch of Dems opposed the war in 2002 and have since then. Saying this does *not* catch Hillary up to them. It does *not* make her look like she’s *acquired* good judgment. It does not make her look like she’s *learned* anything. And it does not make me confident that she’d oppose further warmongering Republican bullshit.

    2. Hillary has not, yet, “[fought] like hell on the Senate floor to get us out of that mess over there, ASAP.” Will Bunch is absolutely right to be unsatisfied.

    They say when you’re in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. I see Hillary noticing that she’s in a hole; I’m not sure she’s stopped digging yet. And I have *not* seen her start to fill the hole back in. You want to impress us? Stop letting Bush get his way and spurn reality. Stop trying to figure out how to thread the needle or triangulate off of Bush and us damn dirty hippies. Stop delaying.

    Fight. Hard. Now.

  • Yeah its easy for her to say it now that the war is at 70 percent disapproval…

    As long as she tries to run on the “Carvillian” DNC platform of triangulation and compromise that shuns and marginalizes progressive ideals and principles in order to pull in a few Repub and right of center libertarian votes she will never ever ever be the Democratic nominee….

    This is a good first step but I think its too little too late for her….between her extremely hawkish positions in light of disaster in Iraq, her toothless and symbolic votes regarding video game violence and flag burning amendments she has really put herself in a tough spot with progressive voters.

    She still has a shot at the nomination if she embraces the progressive movements populist agenda – fair taxation, affordable healthcare, sensible foreign policy, minimum wage increases, deficit reduction, energy independence, protection of civil rights and privacy concerns….all these are populist ideals that will win over not only progressives but some independent voters and repub/liberterian right of center types…by embracing these populist ideals she can still embrace her right of center ideology AND gain resepct within the progressive movement of the Dem Party….its not that hard Hillary if you listen to the will of the people and dump the DNC consultants who have not won a meaningful election since your husband ran in 1996….

  • It’s way too late for her to look like she’s really changed her mind about what she did. I see no real remorse. If there was, it would come in the form of outrage and serious action to undo the damage she did. As it stands, it looks like she is seeking political advantage, which is exactly why she (and a minority of Dems) didn’t fight Bush in 2002. We all knew Bush was a liar, and 9/11 didn’t change that. His BS should never have been given the benefit of the doubt, especially when the BS kept changing as it fell apart.

    She’s very consistently political, and for this reason IMHO she totally sucks ass. If she would take a position that wasn’t already polling in the 70’s, like stepping up and saying outright that Bush should be impeached if he lied about the WMD, then I might reconsider.

  • One other way for her to redeem herself would be to take Murdoch’s money and donate it to any liberal group that Murdoch hates.

    Anyone who sucks from Murdoch’s tit is evil.

  • This is pure posturing which is why I doubt I could ever vote for her. Where were her critical thinking skills when she most needed them?

  • I do not fault any member of Congress for voting for the 10/02 Authorization. I believe that vote helped get UN 1441 passed, and helped get the UN Weapons Inspectors back into Iraq. Those results were useful and worthwhile.

    The Authorization did not COMPEL Bush to invade Iraq. It only made it POSSIBLE for him to invade Iraq. By March ‘ 03, it was clear that Iraq was the not the threat that many had expected.

    I do fault Congress and the media for not speaking out against the war in March ’03, but the Bush administration is fully responsible for starting the war. Bush did not seek the advice of Congress in March ’03 when he invaded, and at no time did Congress actually recommend that Bush invade Iraq.

  • Too ‘Clintonesque’ for me, like she is still trying to split hairs so fine that she can claim to some audiences that she did apologize while to others she can claim that her vote,under the circumstances, was fine but it was the manipulation which she was unaware of and had she known the truth she never would have voted for the war.

  • “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote and I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way.”

    Well hell, that clears it all up! She wouldn’t have voted that way because there wouldn’t have been a vote… Even McCain could claim that!

  • I’m against dynasties … they have no place in a democracy. But I’d still be against Hillary, even if her last name weren’t Clinton. She’s ten times the triangulator that her husband was. It’s taken her four long bloody wasteful years to even come anywhere near realizing that Iraq is and always has been wrong, on many levels. Is this the kind of *courageous leadership* we’re looking for? Really? The best we can do? If so, I’m afraid we (the party and the nation) really are doomed. Might as well freely hand it all over to the corporations which continue to appear to run things in this once-great democracy.

  • She seems to be letting her ambitions override any moral sense she has. Always for the quick expedient fix instead of the more beneficial (for the nation) but more painful moral stand because taking a stand will retard her career goals. Not willing to sacrifice her ambitions for the greater good. She is, to my simple eyes, the distilled essence of ability, careerism, ambition and cynicism minus heart and “soul.”
    –Former Dan, Comment #6

    Our Lady of Perpetual Triangulation is, in the most fundamental way, unappealing. What you and I see is what everyone sees. There’s nothing there, other than a wish to be president because it’s the thing to do.

    Victorious presidential campaigns usually have a grand rationale–whether it’s generational (JFK), reformist (Carter), ideological (Reagan, Bush 2004), or some combination of all the above (Bill Clinton). Obama’s campaign would have such a rationale, as will Edwards’s. (Note: having a rationale isn’t a guarantee of winning–but absent a weird year like 1988 or 2000, it’s generally necessary.)

    What’s Hillary’s reason for running? A Clinton Restoration? Sorry, we’re not a fucking hereditary monarchy. I apologize for the pottymouth, but this is a point that can’t be made too strongly or too often. Breaking the gender barrier? No sale here, at least: identity politics did too much to get us in this mess. Some radical policy change? Remember, this is the Senator who was more conservative on reauthorizing welfare reform than many Republicans.

    Hillary’s campaign is a cult of personality, built around a personality that’s basically not likable. If she wins the nomination, it will be to our shame (because money and tactics will have won it for her) and our detriment.

  • Hillary has to say, “It is a mistake for the U.S. to be in Iraq, now.”

    That statement would put her out in front of a political majority, which believes that to be true, and wants government policy to reflect reality.

    The vote to go to war is ancient history, and increasingly irrelevant. The political struggle, now, is between those who want to cut our losses and stop trying to dominate the Persian Gulf, and those, who argue that the consequences of American failure in Iraq can somehow be postponed or ameliorated by continuing to fail in Iraq indefinitely, or even on a larger scale.

    Hillary has to choose between those two directions, if she is to lead. She cannot lead from a stationary position in the middle.

    The Right wants to go right on trying to dominate the Middle East. The failure of the military in Iraq is just evidence, to them, that the Army needs to be bigger. The chaos we created in Iraq is just evidence that we need to stay.

    Hillary needs to say, “America should not be in Iraq permanently. America should not be trying to dominate the Persian Gulf. America should not be so dependent on oil and fossil fuels, that we need to dominate the Persian Gulf.”

    This is scary stuff. The Democrats have offered the American people similar choices before. The Democrats have offered energy independence and peace in the world and leadership on global warming and balanced budgets and investment in domestic needs like health care and education, and political majorities have chosen Reagan and Bush, lies and illusions, national bankruptcy and perpetual war and cheap gas.

    I don’t know if Hillary needs courage or timing, more. We’ll see. I’m not praying for Hillary, I’m praying for my country.

  • Hannah (#13), perhaps you should re-read that article.

    “he thought he was answering a variation on the same basic query he’d been asked countless times: Was it right to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq? Kerry had simply given his standard “yes,” with the proviso that he would have “done this very differently from the way President Bush has”

    That he can, with a straight face, say this Q & A he thought he was having was materially any different from what Rove and the press claimed is precisely why he was a bad candidate. On the facts known at the time (and more importantly, what was not known — like what the post-war exit strategy was, why the coalition wasn’t larger, what about containment was failing so fast we couldn’t wait for more allies or better troop deployment, why we were abandoning the Powell doctrine, etc) it was not right to give Bush the authority.

    Even under your view of history, Kerry has had numerous chances to clean this up and clarify it, but he long refused to do so. In the end, his approach to this and HRC’s are the same. When the moment called for political courage, they had none. When they saw the damage that failing did to them, they suddenly had a political death-bed conversion. Neither has the upper hand, but at least with HRC did her about-face she was a clearer communicator about it, which counts for something in a candidate.

  • Will: “I do not fault any member of Congress for voting for the 10/02 Authorization. I believe that vote helped get UN 1441 passed, and helped get the UN Weapons Inspectors back into Iraq. Those results were useful and worthwhile.”

    The entire process was a sham by Bush and Cheney. Cheney had been dissing the inspection process during the summer of 2002 before the authorization vote in Congress. All the talk about Saddam’s disregarding the UN resolutions just provided more whoop in Bush’s can of whoopass that he was going to unload regardless of the outcome at the UN. And then, once the inspectors were in Iraq the Bush maladministration did everything they could to undermine and discredit the inspectors.

    Now if Hillary really wants to give us the truth and tell us that she thought voting for the Iraq resolution would inoculate her against being labeled a McGovern democrat in her upcoming presidential run, then I’d cut her some slack on this. But this would be too much political reality to reveal so we’ll continue to hear her lies.

    Really, what is this fucking country thinking by even considering a presidential run by Hillary? Such a huge waste of time.

  • None of the Democrats who voted to give Bush power to invade Iraq can produce a credible excuse. They calculated that, in the 2002 mid-terms, Bush as Republican leader was so popular that showing disapproval of him was political suicide, which it probably was. The result we have today is not much different than several scenarios proffered in 2002 — and the Democrats knew it. Even with their disgusting kow-towing, they were creamed.

    In my opinion, Hillary was a great First Lady. Maybe she’s a decent senator. But she’ll never be president, no matter what. Also, in my opinion, I think John Edwards and Wesley Clark are the best potential candidates.

  • Zeitgeist, I guess I’m basically agreeing with you about Kerry in that he could have been a stronger candidate; that’s why I said “he blew it” in my original comment. During one of the debates (I think it was #3) he had a PERFECT opportunity to explain his “I was for it before I was against it” vote on the $87 billion and he completely wasted it. I was practically yelling at my TV/him. Alas, he couldn’t hear me… no mic. :-p

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