On Fri, 5 May 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> The most amazing thing about this is that someone took the trouble to read
> all those Bob Herbert columns. God, is he dull.
It's true. But always when I'm about to put him on permanent skip (instead of skim) he does something to make me like him again simply for having his heart in the right place. Like today, when he became the most prominent media figure to mention Jonathan Tasini, and probably gave him more publicity than the rest of his campaign put together.
Michael
========
The New York Times
May 8, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Clarity vs. Celebrity
By BOB HERBERT
Few people have ever heard of Jonathan Tasini. He's a low-key labor
organizer and writer from Upper Manhattan who is trying to piece
together a primary challenge to the re-election bid of Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton, primarily because of her stance on the Iraq war.
Mr. Tasini is against the war and wants American troops pulled out of
Iraq forthwith.
Senator Clinton's position is well, that's a problem. It's not at all
clear what Senator Clinton's position is. And for a Democratic Party
that has suffered a succession of brutal defeats with excessively
cautious candidates, Mrs. Clinton's indecisiveness on the war may be a
hint of yet another disaster in the making.
Mr. Tasini is not so deluded that he thinks he can hijack the
Democratic Senate nomination from Mrs. Clinton. He said, "People often
ask me, 'Don't you think this race is impossible?' My answer is, 'Of
course! You're dealing with someone who has enormous name recognition
and celebrity.' "
But celebrity, he said, is no substitute for an honest and vigorous
debate on a matter as fundamentally important as war.
Mr. Tasini favors a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq as quickly
as possible, within several months at most. What is more important
than whether his timetable is feasible is his insistence that the
Democratic Party needs to come to grips with this war. "What makes us
different from Republicans?" he asked. "Where is the soul of the
Democratic Party if we do not stand against immoral, illegal wars?
Pre-emptive wars."
After more than three years of fighting and more than 2,400 American
deaths, you still need a magnifying glass to locate the differences
between Mrs. Clinton and the Bush administration on the war. It's
true, as the senator argues, that she has been a frequent and
sometimes harsh critic of the way the war has been conducted. In a
letter to constituents last fall she wrote, "I have continually raised
doubts about the president's claims, lack of planning and execution of
the war, while standing firmly in support of our troops."
But in terms of overall policy, she seems to be right there with Bush,
Cheney, Condi et al. She does not regret her vote to authorize the
invasion, and still believes the war can be won. Her view of the
ultimate goal in Iraq, as her staffers reiterated last week, is the
establishment of a viable government capable of handling its own
security, thus enabling the U.S. to reduce its military presence and
eventually leave.
That sounds pretty much the same as President Bush's mantra: "Our
strategy in Iraq is that as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down."
What that means is that there is no end to the war in sight.
Other prominent Democrats have belatedly changed their tune on Iraq.
Senator John Kerry has called for a complete withdrawal of American
combat troops by the end of the year. His running mate in the 2004
presidential election, former Senator John Edwards, declared last fall
that "it was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002."
But as yet there is no full-throated public debate, much less anything
approaching a consensus, within the party on Iraq. Democrats are still
paranoid about being perceived as soft on national security.
With superhawk Republicans like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani making
their way toward the starting gate for the 2008 White House run, the
terminally timid Democrats continue to obsess about what they ought to
be saying, neurotically analyzing every syllable they hesitantly
utter, as opposed to simply saying what they really believe.
Aides who are close to Mrs. Clinton suggested last week that she might
be holding her fire, waiting until a new Iraqi government is
established before speaking more openly and candidly about the war.
That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the dying continues. As I was
wrapping up the last of the interviews for this column on Friday, word
came in that three more American soldiers had been killed in Iraq.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee and the early front-runner
for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Mrs. Clinton has a
special obligation to Democratic voters. They deserve much better
leadership than they've been getting from their party on President
Bush's mindless trillion-dollar tragedy in Iraq.