Last week the traveling road show known as the Democratic Presidential Candidates (minus its male lead, Barack Obama) gathered for a roundtable sponsored by their once and future voters and employees, AFSCME, the union which represents government workers.
The results were fairly predictable. No one really said anything new, so I think my reaction is based on just being fed up. This group couldn’t get elected collectively as dog catcher of any town. For example, take their views on Iraq. Hilary Clinton said she didn’t want to de-fund US troops, but she wanted to de-fund Iraqi troops because they’re not pulling their weight. If you had the goal of turning Iraq into a fetid swamp of Islamic fundamentalism and American hatred that is nothing more than a sock puppet of Iran, carrying out the ayatollahs’ bidding while giving them deniability, I could think of no surer method. Of course, that would come after a genocide and civil war that would make the current fighting look like a Fourth of July softball game. Within 90 days, Hilary said, she’d have our troops on transports coming home.
Oh yeah, but none of them come right out and say what they mean. They use words like “redeploy,” as in “We’re redeploying the 1st Infantry Division from Iraq to Fort Riley, Kansas.” That’s not a “redeployment,” that’s a retreat. If you’re going to cut and run, then just say you’re cutting and running.
The Bush administration has made plenty of mistakes in this war and the whole thing could be going better, but I have yet to hear any of the Democrats offer a better solution to the problem than make empty non-binding resolutions and speeches now, strip our soldiers of the funding that allows them to make a good offense the best defense and possibly turn things around by January 2009 (God forbid), and then cut-and-run after January 2009 while blaming it all on Bush.
If any Democrat could offer a coherent foreign policy and military strategy that could reasonably and rationally convince the American people that they will be safer under his (or her, God forbid) administration, they would at least have a fighting chance. Don’t expect that any time soon.
Technorati Tags:Clinton, Democrats, election, Iraq, Obama, presidential campaign
