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Monday, February 12, 2007

Will Hillary Ever Claim Iraq War Vote a Mistake?

Unlike most other bloggers, politicos, and pundits, I refuse to ask whether Hillary Clinton will admit her vote to give Bush authority for the war was a mistake, in retrospect, with 20/20 hindsight, or by whatever criteria are used. This seems to be a topic of much debate, and was further fueled over the weekend while Clinton was campaigning in New Hampshire, and was explicitly asked this question by a Democratic voter. The question itself is unfair, and clearly rests on the meaning of the word "admit". To admit something is to take responsibility for an act having known it was wrong, and to have actively lied about it afterwards. Sure, knowing what we know now, she and most other sitting senators wouldn't have approved of giving the authority to go to war. But with what they and the rest of us, and most of the rest of the world knew at the time, it is obviously debatable whether it was a mistake at the time. To make a timely analogy, imagine that we adapt policies that will alter climate change, which by most accounts, is caused by man-made pollution, namely CO2 emmissions. What if in 10 or 20 years, it turns out the scientific community was wrong - in other words - the consensus opinion is wrong now? Should we at that time be asked to "admit" that we were wrong? Would this be fair? These are rhetorical questions, but in the case of Hillary Clinton, we must think about what we are asking of her, and of ourselves.

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