From Time's interview with the HRC (yeah you know me!):
TIME: But there does seem to be a strain of Democrats who just want you to say the three words: I was wrong.
CLINTON: Well, I've said over and over again, knowing what I know now, I would never have voted for it. The President was the one who was wrong. The President led people to believe that he would be prudent in the exercise of the authority he was given. That proved not to be true.
Hillary's comments here should be taken at face value. She doesn't believe she was wrong. She believes the intelligence was. John Edwards' disappointingly belligerent comments on Iran suggested something similar: Just because a Democrat claims to have learned the lessons of Iraq, just because they now oppose this war, doesn't mean they've learned the same lessons the anti-war movement imagines they've learned. This war can be opposed on grounds so limited as to hold little bearing on a similar, subsequent conflict, say with a country that's a typo of "Iraq."
Put it another way: Hillary believes, or appears to believe, that if the weapons had existed and the management had proven more competent, this war would have been a good idea. John Edwards, who recently assured an Israeli conference that "under no circumstances" can Iran go nuclear and "all options are on the table" to stop them, seems to believe the same. During a recent interview, I asked him about the lessons of Iraq. "You shouldnât assume," he said, "because thereâs a consensus about something that itâs accurate. We need to be very skeptical about information thatâs not direct about whatâs happening." That's a good lesson about intelligence. It isn't necessarily a lesson about the wisdom -- or lack thereof-- of invading other countries.
The lesson I've taken, by contrast, is that toppling Middle Eastern governments, occupying their societies, and trying to impose pluralistic democracy is an almost impossible endeavor, one with far more potential for catastrophe than completion. And it's easy to assume, listening to politicians who have turned against the war, that they've gleaned the same. That isn't necessarily true. Just because they oppose the Iraq War in retrospect, doesn't mean they oppose the theory on which it was based. They may have turned against the lies, or the mismanagement, or its unpopularity. But they may not have substantially raised the bar for the use of force. Given Edwards' recent comments on Iran, he seems comfortable hinting at another war with a more powerful Middle Eastern country over the issue of WMDs. Hillary certainly is. Being anti-war, it seems, is rather different than being anti-this-war.
Update: I should say, for clarity, that I don't think Democrats should be simply "anti-war." I do think they should be very skeptical about the odds of successfully invading and reconstructing Middle Eastern nations, and should be very wary about doing so, particularly on any sort of "pre-emptive" or "preventive" basis..
Crossed to Tapped
