Kossack Parisgnome makes an excellent catch, finding a three-year-old Face the Nation interview transcript (pp. 2-3) in which Hillary Rodham Clinton embraces the John McCain idea that it doesn’t matter how long we stay in Iraq, and the analogy to having troops in Korea:
Senator McCain made the point earlier today, which I agree with, and that is, it’s not so much a question of time when it comes to American military presence for the average American; I include myself in this. But it is a question of casualties.
We don’t want to see our young men and women dying and suffering these grievous injuries that so many of them have. We’ve been in South Korea for 50-plus years. We’ve been in Europe for 50-plus. We’re still in Okinawa with respect to protection there coming out of World War II.
You know, we have been in places for very long periods of time. And in recent history, we’ve made a commitment to Bosnia and Kosovo, and I think what is different is the feeling that we’re on a track that is getting better and that we can see how the Iraqi government will begin to assume greater and greater responsibility. The elections were key to that. The training, equipment, equipping and motivating of the Iraqi security forces is key to that. But so is our understanding that if we were to artificially set a deadline of some sort, that would be like a green light to the terrorists, and we can’t afford to do that.
If Hillary were somehow to cheat her way to the nomination, I guess the DNC would have to pull those “100 years” anti-McCain ads, don’t you think?
I know this isn’t a really important issue, like whether you wear Chinese-made costume jewelry on your lapel, but can we hope that some reporter will ask Sen. Clinton when she changed her mind about this?