Wall Street Journal Stealing Ideas from ZACKlyRight?

The following is the lead editorial from the Wall Street Journal of February 8, 2007:

Hillary on Iraq

One pleasant surprise of Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as New York Senator has been her tough-minded approach on national security. She responded to 9/11 by supporting President Bush's strategy of taking on not just terrorists but the states that harbor them. She also voted for the war in Iraq and has refused to follow much of her party in alleging that Mr. Bush "lied" about weapons of mass destruction.

But as Mrs. Clinton bids to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, she is taking a marked turn to the left. Pressured by other candidates and by her party's left wing, she is walking back her hawkish statements and is now all but part of the antiwar camp. The polls show her to be the favorite to be the next Commander in Chief, so what she really believes, and how firmly she'll stick to it, deserves to be debated. Here's a summary of the arc of Mrs. Clinton's public thinking on Iraq:

- October 10, 2002. Mrs. Clinton addresses the Senate on the use-of-force resolution. "The facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt," she declares, citing Saddam's record of using chemical weapons, the invasion of Kuwait, and his history of deceiving U.N. weapons inspectors. "As a result, President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets," she continues, adding that Saddam "has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members."

While she expresses her preference for working through the U.N. if possible, she adds, "I believe the authority to use force to enforce that mandate is inherent in the original 1991 U.N. resolution, as President Clinton recognized when he launched Operation Desert Fox in 1998 (Blogger's Note: See my post of just 11 days ago on January 29, 2007 for the key excerpts of President Clinton's speech announcing the launch. ZACKlyRight and first again. As I've written before, it never gets old. No word from the WSJ if they are visiting ZACKlyRight for concept ideas.)."

- December 15, 2003. It is clear by now that no large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq. But Mrs. Clinton tells the Council on Foreign Relations that "Yesterday was a good day. I was thrilled that Saddam Hussein had finally been captured. . . . We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the President, to our intelligence services, to all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam. Now he will be brought to justice."

She adds, "I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote." As for Iraq's prospects, she declares herself "a little optimistic and a little pessimistic . . . We have no option but to stay involved and committed."

- April 20, 2004. Mrs. Clinton tells Larry King: "I don't regret giving the President the authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade." Asked whether she thinks she was "fooled," she replies: "The consensus was the same, from the Clinton Administration to the Bush Administration. It was the same intelligence belief that our allies and friends around the world shared about the weapons of mass destruction."

- October 2005. Antiwar fervor on the left is picking up, and activist Cindy Sheehan compares her to Rush Limbaugh after Mrs. Clinton tells the Village Voice: "My bottom line is that I don't want their sons to die in vain . . . I don't believe it's smart to set a date for withdrawal . . . I don't think it's the right time to withdraw."

- November 2005. Mrs. Clinton posts a letter to constituents that marks her first dovish turn. "If Congress had been asked [to authorize the war], based on what we know now, we never would have agreed," she writes. But invoking retired General Eric Shinseki's estimate of more American troops necessary to pacify Iraq, she demands not withdrawal but a new plan: "It is time for the President to stop serving up platitudes and present us with a plan for finishing this war with success and honor -- not a rigid timetable that terrorists can exploit, but a public plan for winning and concluding the war."

- August 3, 2006. Mrs. Clinton calls for Donald Rumsfeld to resign as Defense Secretary, asking for "new leadership that would give us a fighting chance to turn the situation around before it's too late."

- December 18, 2006. Her march left gains speed. On NBC's "Today" show, Mrs. Clinton renounces her war vote unequivocally for the first time: "I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."

- January 13, 2007. From Baghdad, Mrs. Clinton responds to Mr. Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq to secure Baghdad: "I don't know that the American people or the Congress at this point believe this mission can work. And in the absence of a commitment that is backed up by actions from the Iraqi government, why should we believe it?"

- January 17, 2007. Mrs. Clinton calls for capping the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, saying she will introduce legislation to do so. And while she says she won't block money for the troops, she suggests withholding funds for the Iraqi government. It is precisely such a funds cut-off to the South Vietnamese government in 1975 that led to the final U.S. flight from Saigon.

- January 27, 2007. On the campaign trail in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton demands that President Bush "extricate our country from this before he leaves office." And she promises that, if elected, she will end the war quickly.

All politicians change their minds about something at some point, but what's troubling about Mrs. Clinton's record on Iraq is that it tends to follow, rather than lead, public opinion (Blogger's Note: As I wrote on August 23, 2005: If the "position" of the Democrat Party is withdrawal, then shouldn't someone in the Party be saying that right now? Even Sen. Russ Feingold (D, Minnesota), arguably the most vocal Senator against the war on terror, doesn't even call for an immediate pull-out. If the position of the Democrat Party is not pull-out, is one of these Senators going to try to "time" their flip-flop just as the Party's hatred for all things George W. Bush reaches a critical mass? Will the Party really nominate the person that tries to steal the drum major's staff?). When the war was first debated, and she couldn't easily walk away from her husband's record against Saddam, she was a solid, even eloquent, hawk. Then for a time she laid low and avoided the antiwar excesses of John Kerry and others.

But now that the war has proven to be difficult, and her fellow Democrats are outflanking her on the antiwar left, she is steadily, even rapidly, moving in their direction. So in the space of merely 14 months and as the Presidential campaign begins in earnest, Mrs. Clinton has gone from advocating a new plan to "win" the Iraq war, with "honor," to vocally opposing President Bush's new strategy to try to do precisely that. And, oh, yes, she now wants the "surge" to be in Afghanistan instead of Iraq.

The question we'd ask is whether this is the kind of stalwart drift that Mrs. Clinton would bring to the Oval Office? (End of editorial.)