The speech Hillary should give

I voted for the Iraq war to save my political skin. I can no longer lie to myself, or the American people, about the most important issue of our time.

By Gary Kamiya

Read more: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Gary Kamiya, Opinion, Iraq War

Feb. 27, 2007 | My fellow Americans.

As is widely known, I have been under intense pressure to apologize for my vote authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq. While I have become increasingly critical of his conduct of the war, and have proposed capping the number of new troops that can be sent there, I have refused to apologize.

But I have reconsidered. I have decided that my current position is not only politically unwise, but so dishonest, so contrary to my deepest beliefs, that I can no longer maintain it.

I do not come to this decision lightly. Like all politicians, I have to balance political realities against idealism. I've taken a lot of heat for being too pragmatic, too cold, too calculating. I have always rejected this critique because I know the risks I've taken, the principles I hold dear and how hard it is to achieve anything in the real political world. It galls me that so many people see me as some kind of Lady Macbeth, when I have been a feminist, a fighter for social justice, and a strong, powerful and independent first lady. In my small way, I hope that I played a role in the continuing evolution of women in American public life.

These are the things I am most proud of. They are the reasons I got into politics in the first place. They are who I am.

So I don't apologize for the many compromises I've made in my life. I have made those compromises because I believed I needed to in order to win on more important issues.

But after reflection, I have come to understand that on this subject, the harsh criticism I have received is justified.

I now see that my -- quite legitimate -- political concerns have led me to betray my core beliefs. On the most important issue of our time, I cannot continue to publicly mouth a position I don't believe in. I have fought too hard to win power to find myself an empty shell now that I have it. And the direction Bush and Cheney have taken the country is too appalling to go along with.

To be perfectly honest, I also have come to realize that my current position is politically untenable. I thought that I was aligning myself with the great moderate center of America. But on Iraq, that center has moved to the left, leaving me badly out of step not just with most of my party but with independents and swing voters.

Besides, I don't want to spend the next 18 months having food fights with Barack Obama over David Geffen.

I know that I will be called a flip-flopper for changing my position. I know the right wing will call me a liberal, a wimp, not strong enough to lead America in a dangerous world. And I know that my gender will be used against me. But I will be attacked no matter what I do. So I have decided to tell the truth as I see it.

Until now, I have been saying, "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have voted for it." That is a pathetic evasion. So let me say it clearly and forthrightly. I was wrong to vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Like most of my blue-state Democratic colleagues, I voted for the war out of cowardice, for purely self-serving political reasons. I didn't want to appear "soft on terrorism." I knew I was giving an incompetent president surrounded by ideologues with dubious motivations carte blanche to launch an unjustified and incredibly risky war. And I did it to save my own political skin.

Moreover, I knew I was wrong even as I did it. It was the greatest mistake of my life, and I will never stop regretting it. I will feel to my last breath that I bear some share of responsibility for an unjustified war that has become America's greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, and has needlessly cost the lives of more than 3,000 American troops and as many as 700,000 Iraqis.

My vote is an albatross around my neck now, but I want to remind people that it made a lot of political sense at the time. Karl Rove, Fox News and their ilk were successfully smearing everyone who stepped out of line as a traitor and an appeaser. Bush's approval ratings were sky-high. The media had completely rolled over. The New York Times was docilely printing administration lies about scary aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds. The Washington Post, the bible of the Beltway, was banging the drums loudly for war. (I'm not making excuses, but those of you who don't live in D.C. don't understand how insular and distorted it is here in the bubble. We begin to think that what David Broder writes reflects reality.) The foreign policy establishment was mostly on board. Many of my Democratic colleagues were voting for the war too, so there was a lot of tall grass to hide in.

But mainly, I was scared. I was terrified of getting too far away from the American mainstream. My greatest fear was that I'd be seen as weak. Most Americans were still traumatized and angry about 9/11. They didn't know anything about Iraq -- thanks to Bush propaganda, in September 2002, 51 percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 -- and they were prepared to support anything the president proposed. A reflexive, ignorant, fearful "war on terror" mind-set was rampaging. I was afraid the American people would turn on me if I fought them on this one. I'm a Democrat, a woman and a Clinton -- I had three strikes against me on "national security" before I even got to the plate.

So I decided to tack right. The only loud opposition to the war came from liberals, and I assumed they'd vote for me anyway. That was my thinking. It was totally Machiavellian.

Next page: I have foolishly tried to stake out a position to Bush's right on Iran