Edwards Calls Iraq Vote "A Mistake"

[liberalpragmatist]

There's an interview in The Nation and posted on Kos with John Edwards. It's a great article, although admittedly a little too antagonistic to Bill Clinton for my tastes (I make no secret of the fact that I'm a relative moderate on DU).

The article is about Edwards and mostly about his work with poverty. (Why couldn't this man be our Vice President right now, or even President?)

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/moser/

Here's the relevant passage:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/moser/3

In an interview after the UNC speech, Edwards finally utters the words he'd assiduously avoided during the last campaign: "I voted for the resolution," he says. "It was a mistake." So far, so good. But he goes on, "The hard question is, What do you do now? Looking back, it's easy to say that it was wrong and based on false information. Anybody who doesn't admit that isn't honest, and that's the truth." So what now? "I myself feel conflicted about it," Edwards replies. "But we have to find ways--and I don't mean just yanking all the troops tomorrow--but we have to find ways to start bringing our troops home. Our presence there is clearly contributing to the problem." So does he agree with Senator Russ Feingold that Washington should set a withdrawal deadline? "No. Even if we're going to say that internally, that we're gonna have our troops out by X date, there's no reason to announce that to the world. I think that's probably a mistake." He doesn't agree, either, with Senator Clinton's call for more US troops to finish the job? "No sir!" Edwards says, sitting straight up in his chair. "Did she really say that?"

<snip>

Edwards steadfastly declines to revisit the last campaign. "If you don't mind," he says, "I'd rather talk about the future." But as he touts his antipoverty crusade and dissects the morass Democrats find themselves mired in, it is clear that Edwards has done some hard thinking about the lessons of 2004--and about the political opportunity that presented itself in the terrible wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Lesson One: Stop thinking small. "I think in our effort to be elected, we've become minimalists, tinkering around the edges--Our tax cut is better than yours, or, We'll give you smaller class sizes," he says. "That's not what the country wants. We've got to give the American people something big and important to be unified by. Republicans use big things to divide America. I think we can use big things to unite America."

***

It's a great article overall. It's still 3 years away, but I'm increasingly leaning towards Edwards as my pick, although I'm also keeping options open for Warner, Clark, Kerry, and Feingold. And I will almost certainly vote for the nominee, even Hillary, who I have major issues with on the war but think some of the attacks she gets on the blogosphere are unfair. Although I suppose that I might be tempted to vote for Hagel if he were the nominee and were promising to get us out of Iraq and the Democrat were someone urging a "stay-the-course" strategy.

[InvisibleTouch]

1. I've always liked him.

Even more so than Kerry, though most of all I liked the two of them as a team. I hope we see more of Edwards in the future.

[AX10]

2. A year too late but still he is right to repent his vote.

[Roxy66]

3. I thought we already knew this.....

[Leilani]

4. OK, Please Explain

1. His vote was a mistake

2. He disagrees with sending more troops

3. He disagrees with plans to pull out troops, or "to announce it"


What is his plan? to sneak the troops out in the middle of the night, very quietly?

His interview shows no depth of thinking on a solution to our problem in Iraq.

Edwards reminds me of cotton candy...Oh, it looks so pretty, but there's no there there.

[hopein08]

5. Did you have to ruin it for me??!!!

I'm only kidding!:pals::pals::pals:

But really, I do see your points. I would hope that Edwards will formulate more of a plan. The sooner the better obviously.

But he does sound hollow on this issue. As much as I like what he said about Hillary and dislike what he said about Feingold's plan.

I haven't read the entire article, but I will. But this seems to be the plan with most Democrats, including Edwards whom I am a big fan of.

I think this is the problem for Democrats on this issue, and many others. The problem is that they are so afraid of laying out specific details for any plan that they never really do and it's not enough. It seems like they're afraid of stating goals and details because of what will happen if they don't carry them out fully, which they can't in the minority as they are. It is really quite a lame excuse but it is the idea that I have been getting from Edwards, Kerry's campaign last year, Obama on the Daily Show Tuesday, Biden, Clinton(s), Feingold, and this list goes on and on.

Too many people are trying to play it too safe in politics anymore.

Just my thoughts.

[Crunchy Frog]

6. An interesting transcript from Oct. 2003

Hardball interview with Chris Matthews.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3131295

At that stage in the game, he felt very strongly that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, even though it was already very clear that Bush had gone in under false pretenses and there were no WMD. In fact, Edwards states pretty clearly that he had never bought Bush's arguments, but that he favored the invasion anyway for other reasons. He also clearly stated that he would have invaded himself had he been President.

I'm wondering what happened to make him change his mind.