Dangerously Wrong on Iraq

The campaign for the 2008 presidential nominations has arrived early, and each of the candidates, and there seems to be plenty of them, is trying to distinguish himself or herself from all the others. The tripping point for most of them is Iraq. Most of the Republicans have said they supported the invasion of Iraq then and they still do. The exception is Senator Hagel of Nebraska. He boasts that he got it right, he opposed it from the start.

On the Democrat side, Barak Obama makes the same boast, thus claiming his position as a foreign policy genius. John Edwards, in the meantime, has apologized for his vote to go to war, as has John Kerry and several other Democrats. They say they were misled. Senator Clinton, on the other hand, has resisted making an apology. She spends her time trying to dance around the issue, as she usually does with all the tough questions, but her refusal to be contrite does show courage, so far.

The thing is, it is not a question of whether the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do or not. It is a question of the judgment exhibited by these candidates before, during and after it happened.

In the case of Mr. Edwards, he seems to think that a simple apology, and, with a suitable expression of anguish on his face, saying he made a mistake, is enough to put the issue behind him. Sorry to break the news to Mr. Edwards. When it comes to an issue as important as going to war, it is not enough to say, "Oh, sorry," and then go about your business. Then to attempt to justify it with the excuse that he was misled doesn't work either. No, anyone who can be so easily misled to go to WAR is not qualified to be president, pure and simple.

In the cases of Mr. Hagel and Mr. Obama, their claim is that they were the ones who got it right because they opposed the war from the beginning. Sorry to bring the truth into this again, but in fact they got it exactly wrong!