The red phone test

As you undoubtedly know by now, Hillary Clinton is running an ad in her race against Barack Obama in which the "red phone" in the White House rings during the middle of the night as the narrator reminds voters that they will decide who answers, darkly hinting that it better not be Obama.

Wrong. Hillary Clinton has already flunked the test.

The foreign policy crisis came, and she reacted the wrong way.

Time and time again she has excused her support for George W. Bush's criminal war in Iraq by saying "If I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way," when in fact anybody who was paying attention (and millions of us were, with millions more abroad ... and dozens more in Congress) already knew the administration's case for war was specious. Clinton didn't care what she knew; she was too busy pandering to the right. Since then, she has come to criticize the administration's abominable handling of the war, but she has never repudiated her vote, her early support for the war, or her consequent complicity for the oceans of blood that this illegal war has shed and the trillions in treasure it has cost America.

Hillary Clinton is running on her "experience." But her most important foreign policy experience was to commit a colossal mistake.

If the red phone rings, I hope it's not Hillary Clinton who answers.

Note: this originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 1 March 2008