We live in a world of apologies. Bill Clinton apologized for slavery; the previous pope apologized for the Crusades. Taking it to the next level, a recent apologizer said that, if he’d offended anyone, “including myself,” he wanted to apologize.
It is then mystifying that Hillary Clinton hasn’t apologized for her vote to authorize force in Iraq. I’ve thought that the reason Clinton won’t quite apologize is that, deep down, she knows it was the right vote. Brendan Miniter of the Wall Street Journal says she’s looking ahead:
“In mid-January an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that public support for President Bush’s troop surge increased to 35%, up from 26% a few weeks earlier. The same poll found that a slim majority of Americans were against the war in Iraq, but 68% said they opposed shutting off funds to fight it, and 60% said they would oppose Congress’s withholding funds necessary to send additional troops.
“The poll was not an anomaly. Hillary Clinton and her chief strategist, Mark Penn, himself a former pollster, know how to read public opinion surveys. Which may explain why she steadfastly refuses to ‘apologize’ for voting to authorize the war in 2002 while also calling for Mr. Bush to end the war before he leaves office and favoring a nonbinding Senate resolution opposing an ‘escalation.’ The war may not be popular, but the public isn’t ready to support losing either.”
This is something Jack Murtha might want to ponder.