O’REILLY-CLINTON
INTERVIEW
SHOWS DEM FLAW
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on May 2, 2008.
Bill O’Reilly asked Hillary Clinton the key question about the war in Iraq: What happens if we pull out and the Iranians move in? She talked around the issue, but never gave a convincing answer to O’Reilly’s question. She said she would replace force with diplomacy. But, as Frederick the Great said, “Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.” If our troops are long gone from Iraq, the Iranians will snub our diplomacy and laugh at our entireties. They will add Iraq to their other trophies in the region: Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.
Hillary’s inability to answer O’Reilly’s question reveals a larger flaw in the Democratic arguments as the election approaches. Obama will be the Democratic nominee (take that to the bank). How will the Iraq War play in the race? On the surface, it would appear to be a disaster for the Republicans. With American deaths now over the 4,000 mark and the seriously wounded at around 15,000, we are sick and tired of this war. It has destroyed George W. Bush and could well do the same to John McCain.
But maybe not. McCain’s position is simple: win in Iraq. The experience and the success of the past year indicate that it may be quite possible to do so. But, whatever you may think of it, his is a simple solution.
If, by some chance, Hillary is the nominee, then the same problem will land in her lap and she showed in trying to parry O’Reilly’s thrust, that she won’t be any better at answering the doubts than Obama would be.
The truth is that the Democrats are cashing in on a mindless impatience with Iraq and an unwillingness to think through the consequences of pulling out. They are capitalizing on an emotional “no” in reaction to the war. But when the alternatives are carefully explained and examined, as they will be in a presidential debate, they are not going to embrace the answers Obama or Hillary will have to the “what ifs.” They will see the Democratic position as extremist and unworkable and will come to see the Democratic candidate who is pushing them as unprepared and unrealistic. If the candidate is Obama, their concerns will resonate with their perception that he is inexperienced and doesn’t know his way around foreign policy. This will raise more and more doubts about his ability to lead us in a time of crisis.
This unholy mess in Iraq, which has almost destroyed the Republican party and has destroyed the Bush presidency, may yet rebound and work against the Democrats in the election this year.
Lee ADDS: Neither Democrat in the Presidential race shows any common sense respecting a ‘pull out’ thereby prolonging a war instead of a cessation of conflict. Once the insurgents hear that we are going to stay until, they cease their wholesale slaughter of innocents, they will quit in frustration!
America ‘cut and ran’ from Viet Nam and we do not need to make that same mistake twice.
