HRC AND THE FOREIGN POLICY ELITE. Far be it from me to disagree with our erstwhile boss man, Mike Tomasky, but I was intrigued by his post on "Comment is Free," the online opinion page of the Guardian. Mike argues that the reason Hillary Clinton refuses to admit that she was wrong to support the Iraq War is the influence of the foreign policy establishment: "This is a bunch whose views are well to the right of the Democratic primary electorate. And it is a bunch in whose good graces Hillary Clinton, a cautious and establishment politician at her core, is fervent to stay." Well, he's certainly right about the first point, as he illustrates with figures like Ken Pollack and Richard Holbrooke. On the second, though, I'd offer a slightly different analysis. I'm not sure that Senator Clinton is so concerned with sucking up to those guys -- I think if she moves to the left to get elected they'll still gladly take jobs from her. I think she, being in some sense a member of that same cadre, simply subscribes to the same way of thinking that they do. As Mike points out, the foreign policy elite include many former government officials. Just as the Clintons became more hawkish after eight years of actually serving (or being so close to it, in Hillary's case), isn't it possible the same thing happened to their advisors who now fill the ranks of Brookings et al? (A more cynical, but equally valid, explanation might be the effect of eight years of being influenced by the group think that emerges from career military officials and bureaucrats.) I, for one, though I disagreed with their support for the war from the beginning, never doubted the Clintons' sincerity. Correction: This post originally stated that Mike neglected to mention that many foreign policy elites also served in government. I regret the error.
--Ben Adler
