Well, Let's Talk About Doublespeak Then

If the trend holds and Hillary Clinton winds up taking Ohio, two factors will be cited as the reason: her 3AM ad questioning Obama's national security credentials, and the NAFTA/Canada kerfuffle, which suggested that Obama says one thing in speeches and another in private. I've said consistently that I don't think Obama or Clinton are wild-eyed populists, and neither will go to the mat over free trade. But if this is the new standard, if scrutinizing whether policy matches rhetoric, then Clinton could be on very shaky ground. Because there are indications that she won't end the Iraq war if elected, and will indeed carry the Bush/McCain policy forward.

This is mainly coming from outside sources at this point. Gen. Jack Keane is claiming that she would not move to end the war.

If Senator Clinton can best Senator Obama in today's round of primaries and caucuses and go on to capture the White House, a co-author of the surge strategy in Iraq says he is convinced she would hold off on authorizing a large-scale immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq.

In a weekend interview, a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, said that when he briefed Mrs. Clinton in late 2006 and January 2007 on the counteroffensive strategy known as the surge, she "generally supported the surge strategy in the sense she wanted it to succeed but she was skeptical about its chances."

The Obama campaign yesterday seized on the general's comments after they appeared in an article on The New York Sun's Web site, with the chief spokesman, William Burton, issuing a statement saying: "Senator Clinton needs to explain to the American people what she said to the architect of George Bush's surge that made him think she wouldn't end the war."

Is this any different than Austin Goolsbee talking to the Canadian Embassy about NAFTA? Ken Pollack said pretty much the same thing:

Kenneth Pollack, a Persian Gulf specialist who worked for the Clinton White House, and who has become a proponent of the military surge in Iraq since leaving government, said yesterday: "I don't know what she would do as president. But all of my experience with her when she was first lady is that this is a woman who would put our nation's interests first and any campaign promises a distant second."

This is that sickness in the foreign policy community that confines options to this narrow sliver, ignoring the reality on the ground. The truth is that Iraq is a two trillion dollar nightmare which has constrained our domestic policy for a generation, ruining the opportunity to fix Social Security and Medicare and provide decent health care to our veterans. The surge (and these are largely the architects of the surge saying Clinton won't end the war) has absolutely not worked and it's starting to fracture. The insurgents that we decided to arm so they wouldn't kill us have no loyalty to us, and are ready to strike at the Shiites at the slightest provocation. That provocation may already have manifested itself in the collapse of a legal case against two Shi'a charged with kidnapping and killing Sunnis, which speaks to the total breakdown of the legal system along sectarian lines. We've built a house of cards that can only end by falling apart.

And in this context, here's what Sen. Clinton has actually said at a recent event in Texas.

"We have given them the gift of freedom, the greatest gift you can give someone. Now it is really up to them to determine whether they will take that gift."

This is a justification for launching the war, as a fight for Iraqi freedom, and nobody who actually believes that is going to do anything other than stay the course.

As long as we're going to talk about policy not matching rhetoric, then this has to be in the equation. Will she actually end the occupation of Iraq, return diplomacy to the fore in our dealing with the world, and move to a different foreign policy with a different mindset?