Obama is getting more explicit in his condemnation of Clinton's initial backing of the war. In a foreign policy speech yesterday at DePaul University, without naming her specifically, he implied that her decision was not only a poor choice at the time, but an indication of deeper character flaws:
But the conventional thinking in Washington has a way of buying into stories that make political sense even if they don't make practical sense. We were told that the only way to prevent Iraq from getting nuclear weapons was with military force. Some leading Democrats echoed the Administration's erroneous line that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. We were counseled by some of the most experienced voices in Washington that the only way for Democrats to look tough was to talk, act and vote like a Republican.
As Ted Sorensen's old boss President Kennedy once said "the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war" and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears." In the fall of 2002, those deaf ears were in Washington. They belonged to a President who didn't tell the whole truth to the American people; who disdained diplomacy and bullied allies; and who squandered our unity and the support of the world after 9/11.
But it doesn't end there. Because the American people weren't just failed by a President - they were failed by much of Washington. By a media that too often reported spin instead of facts. By a foreign policy elite that largely boarded the bandwagon for war. And most of all by the majority of a Congress - "a coequal branch of government" - that voted to give the President the open-ended authority to wage war that he uses to this day. Let's be clear: without that vote, there would be no war.
The full text of yesterday's speech is here.
His campaign is also stepping it up with a new online ad featuring the speech he gave against the war exactly five years ago yesterday. Garance has the video, which features a portion of the actual speech, with the rest of that speech read by campaign volunteers. Apparently there are only 14 seconds of video from the speech, so they're doing what they can with it. The result is impressive though -- a lot more so than if it were just a replay of the speech.
He's definitely moving Iraq to the center of his campaign, but it's not clear that the fact that he's always been against it is enough to give him cred on what should happen next.
--Kate Sheppard
