When Clinton took the U.S. into Serbia, there was some Republican opposition, but only a fraction of the opposition Bush got for going into Iraq. Some of that was political expediency, while others were due to the Pat Buchanan-neo isolationist view that there’s almost nothing outside of Putin reconstituting the Soviet Union that should justify a major commitment of American military forces overseas.
Watching Hillary and the other Democratic hopefuls for 2008 trying to leave themselves maneuvering room if they get elected shows that a great deal of the opposition to the war in Iraq is merely political opportunism.
In it’s own way, that’s even more reprehensible than the anti-war people on the left who actually believe there’s no American interest in remaining in Iraq. Those people are simply too stupid to know better or truly do hate American to the point they want us to lose. People like Hillary or Edwards know better, but actually give Bush a backhanded vote of confidence by gambling that they can try to win the votes of the far left by acting like the Islamic terrorist threat is overblown, because they believe there won’t be a major attack on U.S. soil or American interests overseas before next November’s election.
Had Gore won in 2000, he still would have faced the dumb/America-hating left’s opposition to U.S. action in Iraq — the same ones who rioted in Seattle during Clinton’s G-8 conference in 1999 — and he’d have people like Buchanan opposing him, as well as a few others on the right who would try to portray Al as the 21st Century’s LBJ simply to gain political power. But there’s no way you’d be seeing the conventional media onslaught against the war in the same way you’re seeing it today with Bush in the White House.
