A Third Way in Afghanistan

President Obama is currently pondering the most difficult decision of his young administration: our country’s future direction in Afghanistan. His choice has often been portrayed in the media as binary: should he pursue the counterinsurgency strategy (COIN) proposed by General McChrystal, or should he follow the counter-terrorist strategy advocated by Vice-President Biden?

Media reports indicate that Obama is unsatisfied with the choices he has, and he should be. Both approaches are fatally flawed. Before I say why that is the case, and what a better strategy might be, let’s review why we’re in Afghanistan at all.

What are our interests in Afghanistan? If the Taliban returns to power, it would likely provide a haven for Al Qaeda to launch terrorist attacks against us. There is a legitimate controversy as to how important safe harbor is for an organization like Al Qaeda, with many pointing out that in the past attacks have usually originated in European cities, and that Al Qaeda is now functioning under a ‘cloud’ model that obviates central command. This is true, but it is undeniable that allowing them to reconstitute a sheltered and functioning command and control would be an operational and propaganda victory for them.

If this were the only risk, it would not be sufficient reason for us to stay. The more serious risk we run is that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan might provide moral encouragement, financial assistance and tactical support to an insurgency in Pakistan. Pakistan has a large and capable military, but it is badly infiltrated, and the Pakistani population is the most radicalized in the region. Given that Pakistan has around 50 nuclear weapons, a radical fundamentalist regime next door is simply an unacceptable risk. The claim that is sometimes made about the Iranian leadership – that they are so fanatical they are willing to take risks that threaten their existence – is probably not true about them, but has proved true of the Taliban. In 2001, they threw away power and risked their lives rather than give up their Al Qaeda cohorts; that is a symptom of fanatical – and undeterrable – ideological commitment.

Preventing a Taliban victory, however, is a daunting task. In his recent resignation letter, U.S. Diplomat Matthew Hoh spelled out the difficulties. One doesn’t have to agree with his prescriptions to admire how well he frames the challenge:

If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah's reign, has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency. The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police unites that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.

So when General McChrystal, in his August 30 assessment, writes:

ISAF’s [International Security Assistance Force’s] center of gravity is the will and ability to provide for the needs of the population “by, with, and through” the Afghan government. A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution.

He is giving away the very Achilles heel of the operation. The Afghan forces are as much invaders to the Pashtun tribes as the Americans are. The tribes see them as a force they’ve been fighting for decades: a Kabul-centered government that takes much, imposes much, and gives back nothing. Even if Kabul were squeaky-clean instead corrupt, and duly-elected instead of illegitimate, it would still not command the allegiance of the Pashtun tribes that have resisted their rule for decades. The Pashtun do not like the Taliban either, and they resent their interference – but at least the Taliban is Pashtun. Hoh rightly calls this sentiment ‘Valley-ism.’ The Pashtuns value affiliations of family, tribe, and proximity far more than they feel the bonds of nationality. That at this stage, we do not understand the nature of the challenge ahead of us is uncomfortably reminiscent of Vietnam, where we mistook nationalism for ideological fervor.

Conversely, the problem with a counter-terrorist strategy is not that it is impractical, but that it doesn’t address our interests adequately. Aerial strikes on terrorist targets would make our presence unpopular to the local population, and might hasten a fall of the government. The U.S. might be able to prevent the building of training camps in Afghanistan, but that is all we would prevent. An ideological movement threatening our vital ally, Pakistan, would remain unchecked.

We need to take a step back and ask ourselves: Is the end state we are envisioning – a stable and democratic Afghan government with control over all its land – necessary for the achievements of our goals? The answer is no. We are trying to give Afghanistan something it has never had before, something we do not need in order to defeat the Taliban.

Our recent experience in Iraq might hold some lessons for us. The key to the dramatic turnaround in that country was not the small increase in troops called “the surge,” or the change in strategy to COIN (which since it depends on a change of attitude in the population, would certainly have taken far longer to show such dramatic results.) The reversal was due to the Anbar Awakening: smart U.S. officers on the ground recognized a rift between Al Qaeda and the Sunni insurgency and intelligently exploited it. They backed and coordinated with Sunni brigades called “Sons of Iraq” that employed disaffected former insurgents. This is a strategy that bubbled from the ground up, and it caught everyone by surprise. We didn’t need to defeat our enemies; we could, in effect, hire them.

Perhaps something similar is possible in Afghanistan. Major Jim Gant, a decorated Special Forces officer, was stationed in 2003-2004 with seven other U.S. troops in a small Pashtun village near the Pakistani border. He writes about this experience in a paper, and corroborates much of what Hoh wrote:

Afghan tribes always have and always will resist any type of foreign intervention in their affairs. This includes a central government located in Kabul, which to them is a million miles away from their problems, a million miles away from their security.

But Gant goes on to describe how he developed close relations with the village chieftain, whom he affectionately called "Sitting Bull." He was audacious enough to arm and supply the village's fighters, probably breaking many rules but winning their trust and allegiance and gaining access to valuable intelligence. It is this approach - a tribal engagement strategy - that he advocates for the country as a whole. He calls the fighters Arbakai, a tribal militia that would protect their neighbors from Taliban intimidation. These could be the Afghani equivalent of the “Sons of Iraq,” grass-roots warriors defending their own tribal interests, with the U.S. as their ally – not imposing a central government on them, but giving them what they want: security, their tribal traditions, and the right to be let alone.

I will go farther than Gant does. Instead of envisioning an end state where Kabul dominates all of Afghanistan, we should be striving for Kabul + Largely Autonomous Tribe Lands. The Karzai government would control the heavily populated areas in the east of the country, and as best they could the border areas with Pakistan. They would have nominal sovereignty over their country, as previous Afghani governments have. The Pashtuns would be empowered to defend themselves from the Taliban, but they would largely be free of Kabul too. Provincial government structures would have to be developed in order to resolve inter-tribal conflicts and law-and-order issues; largely, governance would come from nearby.

Obviously, bringing about this end state is an extraordinarily difficult task. We would need a lot of men like Gant: smart, highly trained, with a ravenous cross-cultural appetite and a keen emotional intelligence. These people would have to develop close relationships on the ground and would need to attain a granular view of local politics. It would be a war won not so much by force as by micro-diplomacy. Despite the complexity of the task, this might be the only way to achieve our objectives. It is foolish to fight a war that requires winning the allegiance of an inherently conservative people while also attempting to re-engineer their society. As Gant writes:

We will be totally unable to protect the “civilians” in the rural areas of Afghanistan until we partner with the tribes for the long haul. Their tribal systems have been there for centuries and will be there for many more. Why should we fight against not only what they have been accustomed to for centuries, but what works for them? They will not change their tribal ways. And why should they?

Cutting Off Our Uplifted Nose

President Bush objects to Barack Obama's willingness to meet foreign leaders without preconditions:

"Warming to the subject, Bush continued: “Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, 'Look at me. I'm now recognized by the president of the United States.'”

Most of the rest of the world thinks that over the last 8 years we've been haughty and high-handed. Most of the rest of the world trades with Cuba and they are puzzled that we maintain an embargo that has had no effect whatsoever on the political situation there. Seriously... who wins the most PR points from a meeting between the Cuban and American Presidents? It's not the guy with the surname 'Castro'.

Iraq and the History of Civil Wars

Kevin Drum leans on some research on civil wars to scan our options on Iraq. A good post.

Fun With Graphs

Yes, Powerpoint has been the butt of parody before. Rarely, however, has it served the Confused God of Obfuscation as well as it did in General Petraeus's hands yesterday. Matthew Yglesias has the rundown on one particularly dishonest graph and Kevin Drum marvels at another.

UPDATE: Via Andrew Sullivan, here's an astonishing quote from Petraeus's PhD dissertation:

The Vietnam experience left the military leadership feeling that they should advise against involvement in counterinsurgencies unless specific, perhaps unlikely, circumstances obtain -- i.e. domestic public support, the promise of a quick campaign, and freedom to employ whatever force is necessary to achieve rapid victory. In light of such criteria, committing U.S. units to counterinsurgencies appears to be a very problematic proposition, difficult to conclude before domestic support erodes and costly enough to threaten the well-being of all America's military forces (and hence the country's national security), not just those involved in the actual counterinsurgency.

The Score on Iraq

Kevin Drum gathers together some helpful metrics on Iraq, but Matthew Yglesias delves into the Army's counterinsurgency field manual to remind us what the really important metric is.

The New New Iraq

The Bush Administration has criticized the Maliki government sharply, and now Maliki has sniped back calling them "discourteous" and saying Iraq could "find friends elsewhere."

I had wondered how the administration would sell a continuation of their Iraq policy in September, when a report to Congress is due. Back in the spring the NEW AND IMPROVED! factor had been the surge. Yes, we've been in Iraq for four years now, but never with shiny new General Petraeus! Never with a true counter-insurgency strategy! Never with this troop surge!

Well, the surge came and -- because of troop availability -- it will have to wane in the spring. The incremental increase in troops managed to cut down on violence in Baghdad, but country-wide both US and Iraqi deaths are up compared to corresponding months last year. With key Sunnis leaving the cabinet, the political situation has actually gone backwards. In a development unrelated to the surge, Sunnis in Al-Anbar have teamed with the U.S. to fight Al-Qaeda, but that's a double-edge sword... we may just be arming future combatants against the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

So how can the administration sell a continuation? What's the new excuse to delay a reckoning? Where's the new NEW AND IMPROVED! factor?

Expect a new Prime Minister soon.

Chronicle of a Distortion

Sometimes bad news coverage can set the tone for a story. Here's what the Associated Press wrote about Barack Obama's speech:

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

Wow! Obama threatened to invade Pakistan! Drudge was off, Maguire was off, all the boys started ooh-ing at Barack's invasion threat. Except, of course, he said nothing of the sort:

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.

And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America’s commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists’ program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair – our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally.

It's a nuanced view. It offers Pakistanis carrots and sticks in exchange for their cooperation, it favors Pakistani democrats, and it allows for the possibility of military operations on Pakistani soil.

Ah, but it was too late. J-Pod over at the Corner was off:

Obama is full of it. This country is never — never — going to stage a major military action against Pakistan. Pakistan is a nation of 170 million people that has nuclear weapons and whose admittedly problematic and troublesome regime has, to some extent, cooperated with the United States in the war against Al Qaeda both in ways we know and ways we have no idea about. The concern that this strategically vital county might become an Islamic fundamentalist state is, should be, and will be paramount in every and all discussions about how to conduct the fight against Al Qaeda.

What's more, every serious person knows the United States won't invade Pakistan, even with Special Forces — since the reason we cancelled the proposed action against Al Qaeda in 2005 is that it was going to take many hundreds of American troops to do it. This isn't 15 people dropping like ninjas in the darkness. It's an invasion, with helicopters and supply lines and routes of ingress and escape. It would have had unforseen and unforeseeable consequences, but it would have been reasonable to assume the Pakistanis would have turned violently against the United States and hurtled toward Islamic fundamentalist control.

If the evil Bushitler Cheney Rumsfeld Monster wouldn't do it, nobody will do it.

Of course, both Clinton and Bush considered military operations in Pakistan, from a cruise missile attack to a special forces snatch-and-grab. Now maybe they made the right decision to not go through with those plans, but there's no reason why a President Obama should rule out such an option, especially when the threat itself might be persuasive.

If Giuliani had said the same thing, J-Pod would be chirping happily, but when a Democrat says it, the reaction is first to distort what he says, and then to have a tantrum and protest that it's impossible to out-hawk our Dear Leader so please don't even try.

Framing a Withdrawal Timetable

I have to disagree with Kevin Drum disagreeing with Swopa (although I don't agree with Swopa either.) Swopa argues that we should emphasize our death toll in Iraq to win the argument, but Kevin counters:

The reason we should leave Iraq isn't because the war is costing lives, but because the war isn't critical to our national security.

Trouble is, the area is critical to our national security. Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world, for God's sake. It could draw its Arab neighbors into a fracticidal Sunni-Shia regional conflict. And it could draw our NATO partner Turkey to move against our stalwart Kurd allies.

Those who favor withdrawal can't be seen to be promising flowers and sweets, like the administration did before the war. When we leave, things probably will get worse. But (and here is the rhetorical frame, which also happens to have the virtue of being true): Iraqis are the only ones who can sort this out... and they can do it better by themselves.

Why? A number of reasons:

1) Civil wars are only over when one side knows it has lost. Sunnis see both Republicans and Democrats saying they want to leave; they are aware of American domestic political pressure. The Sunni insurgency will not lose hope until they can take on the Shiites solo, without American interference. Until they do so a Shiite government will not have credibility of force.

2) Any Iraqi government which depends on the protection of the Americans will not be seen as a sovereign government, thus hurting its credibility with the Iraqi people and its neighbors.

3) An Iraq government that has to cater to American desires is handicapped in building its own Iraqi constituency, which inevitably will have contrary desires to America's.

4) Only a portion of the violence in Iraq is anti-American in motivation, but it is not an insignificant portion. By disengaging in the short term and promising to withdraw in the medium-term America would be diminishing an element of opposition. Al Qaeda has very little political support in Iraq. They are thriving only because of the American presence and the anarchy present there. Once a stable government arises, Al Qaeda in Iraq will be crushed.

We have to warn the public that violence will probably get worse, and the resulting government might not be to our liking, but also make it clear that if we stayed we would probably be turning a 2-year civil war into a 10-year civil war.

In other words, we need to talk to Americans like grown-ups.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum responds by e-mail:

Points taken, but I didn't say the area wasn't critical to our national security. I said the *war* wasn't critical to our national security. In fact, I think it's detrimental. I hope this doesn't seem like nitpicking, since I think it's a pretty important difference.

I agree about the possibility that Iraq will get a lot worse once we leave. In fact, I've blogged about this a few times before. It's hard to say exactly how politicians should address this, but I agree that, one way or another, those of us who oppose the war need to prepare the public for this.

Actually, as near as I can tell, we pretty much agree with each other. If there's any real disagreement, it's pretty small.

Substantially, I think our positions are pretty close. And perhaps I didn't characterize Kevin's position fairly. But my quibble was regarding rhetorical emphasis: it's the difference between saying "the war isn't important to us" and "we aren't helping by staying." I think Americans can instinctively grasp the concept that meddling sometimes makes things worse.

Gingrich-World

Remember the clucks of disdain when Silvestre Reyes, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, failed a simple quiz about Al Qaeda?

When asked by CQ National Security Editor Jeff Stein whether al Qaeda is one or the other of the two major branches of Islam -- Sunni or Shiite -- Reyes answered "they are probably both," then ventured "Predominantly -- probably Shiite."

That is wrong. Al Qaeda was founded by Osama bin Laden as a Sunni organization and views Shiites as heretics.

What a doofus, huh? But wait a minute... what's this Gingrich is saying on Meet the Press this morning?

And I think we have dramatically expanded the excitement and incentives of the terrorists, both in the Iranian-funded Shia wing and the Saudi-funded Sunni wing of Al Qaeda. [My Tivo-aided transcription]

And he sounded so professorial saying it too. I wonder... when will the guffaws start?

Catch-22, Iraqi-style

Josh Marshall writes that "the occupation itself is the cause of the unrest and violence in [Iraq]." I think that's partially true, but more importantly, the occupation is thwarting any resolution of the conflict. Civil wars end when one side knows it has lost. As long as we are in Iraq the insurgency will not know that it has lost. Both Republicans and Democrats say they want the U.S. leave -- Iraqis realize that the occupation isn't forever. Until the U.S. has left, hope will still live in the hearts of the Sunni fighters. The Iraqi government, already cheated of sovereign legitimacy, will not be able to establish its own credibility of force.

It's Catch-22, Iraqi-style. The U.S. can’t leave Iraq until its government can stand by itself. The Iraqi government can’t stand by itself while the U.S. is propping it up.

UPDATE: Check the link... Josh has kindly posted my response to him.

Psy-Op Musings

I just finished seeing Bill Moyers' excellent documentary on the media's performance in the run-up to the Iraq war. It reminded me of a detail that I haven't heard mentioned since. In the first hours of the invasion, CNN and other outlets reported that the U.S. was in secret talks with Iraqi Generals to secure their surrender. After the invasion, when no such surrenders were forthcoming, there were no follow-ups.

Obviously, this was a psy-op tactic. Nothing would sow havoc in the Iraqi chain of command more than having Saddam think that he might be betrayed by his top military officers. If the U.S. military were truly in possession of such information, they certainly wouldn't make it public; that would risk the cooperation of these officers, or maybe their removal.

The media was used, and I have to imagine that they must have at least suspected that they were being used. If it had worked, maybe American lives might have been saved during the invasion. Is a journalist justified in betraying his vocation by lying, even when it might save lives?

After the Veto

McJoan has an interesting piece over at Kos mulling over Democratic options after Bush has vetoed the Iraq funding bill. Her solution? Pass a clean bill without mandates, but also announce that Congress will not fund the war after March 31, 2008.

I think the best thing for the country would be a negotiated settlement, but I don't think the odds are good.

World War III?

Via Kevin Drum, here's a depressing Rolling Stone roundtable on the future of Iraq. Former Senator Bob Graham sketches out a worst-case scenario:

I believe the chance that the chaos in Iraq could bring countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia into the mix is in the forty to fifty percent range. The big danger is what I call the August 1914 Syndrome. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo -- what would have been in the scale of history a minor event -- set in motion activities that turned out to be beyond the ability of the Western powers to control. And they ended up in one of the most brutal wars in man's history by accident. If the Saudis come in heavily on the side of the Sunnis, as they have threatened to do, and the Iranians -- directly or through shadow groups like Hezbollah -- become active on behalf of the Shiites, and the Turks and the Kurds get into a border conflict, the flames could spread throughout the region. The real nightmare beyond the nightmare is if the large Islamic populations in Western Europe become inflamed. Then it could be a global situation.

As I wrote recently, one of the few things we can achieve in Iraq is act as a tripwire to discourage the intervention of other powers. This would decrease the flammability of the situation greatly. A good and wise leader would be attempting to forge a bipartisan coalition around this position. He would be trying to bargain with the public, giving them a substantial troop withdrawal and in return asking for patience beyond this electoral cycle. Alas, we are not governed by any such leader and none are in sight.

UPDATE, 3/15/07: In an interview with the New York Times, Hillary Clinton sketches out a plan similar to what I describe. This is to her credit because it can't be a popular strategy with the base right now.

Bush in Latin America

Please, Mr. President! No good will tours.

Showdown on Iraq

It looks like we're headed for an ugly stand-off between Congress and the President on Iraq. Some form of a Democratic bill mandating withdrawal will pass the House but will probably not have enough votes for cloture in the Senate, and certainly not have the votes to override a veto. In the meantime, war funding will be held hostage and a political game of chicken will commence. My preference would have been that Congress and the President sit down after the election and come up with a bipartisan approach to the war. But Bush was too eager to rule like a monarch. Regretably, the time for that is gone.

My current position is close to Edward Luttwak's (TimesSelect). I would favor disengagement in Iraq, leaving some troops there in bases located away from urban centers. Their mission would be to discourage the direct intervention of neighboring countries. If terrorist targets of opportunity presented themselves, they could be attacked. I think these are the only things we can be reasonably sure we can accomplish in Iraq. To try to do things we are fairly sure we can't accomplish -- like squelch a civil war -- risks making things worse in the long run.

If we disengage, Iraq will still be a mess. It might even get worse. But if we continue to pursue our current goals, we have little reason to believe that our slim chance of success will outweigh the known and unknown costs and risks we are incurring.

Completely Corrupted

Fred Kaplan is right. In 2002, the administration said they were sure North Korea was enrichening uranium. That was when they were trying to justify abandoning the Agreed Framework. Today, they are trying to bolster the case for a deal that is similar to the Agreed Framework, so they've changed their story: now they say they weren't really sure whether North Korea was enrichening uranium.

Here's Kaplan:

[This] shows that Bush and his people will say anything, no matter whether it's true, in order to shore up a political point. It means that U.S. intelligence has become completely corrupted.

It would be nice to know whether Iran is supplying Iraqi insurgents with particularly deadly explosives. It would be nice to know how far along the Iranians are coming with their (quite real) enriched-uranium program. It would be nice to know lots of things about this dangerous world. Or it would, at least, be nice to have a true sense of how much our intelligence agencies know about such things.

But we don't know how much these agencies know, because we can have no confidence in what the Bush administration tells us they know.

690 days to go. Cross your fingers and hold your breath.

Yet More Democratic Timidity

"I'm going to be very clear: Democrats will not cut off funding for our troops."
- Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

And now we see a new poll showing that a narrow plurality of voters favors cutting off funds. Of course, now that the Democrats have accepted the Republican frame that you need to fund the troops in order to support them, their maneuvering room is limited. What possible advantage was there in ceding that ground instead of circumspectly saying "we have no plans to cut off funds"?

Can't anyone on our side play this game?

So Much for Flypaper...

From a Mother Jones study: the Iraqi war has increased terrorism sevenfold worldwide. Via Kevin Drum.

Sullivan Fumbles?

Andrew Sullivan posted the following this morning:

The Argentina govenment has refused to hold high-level meetings with U.S. attorney-general, Alberto Gonzales. The reason? According to the government, refusing to meet with him "expressed its deep felt and firm policy of opposition to torture." Argentinians have a long and bitter history of governments that disappear and torture people. They know who Gonzales is and what he represents.

I'm not saying this isn't true, but Sullivan links to a Buenos Aires publication, Pagina 12, that does not say this at all. Here is my translation of what they're reporting:

Yesterday, the Executive Director of CELS, Gaston Chillier, gave President Nestor Kirchner a letter asking that the Argentine Government expressly reaffirm its policy against torture to the visiting delegation

I have no idea what CELS is. I e-mailed Andrew hoping to get a clarification, but I've gotten no response and seen no correction posted. As of now, Google News has no confirmation from a major news organization. Other sites like HuffPost are linking to the post.

Maybe Andrew has this nailed, but as of now I'm skeptical.

UPDATE: Sullivan linked to the wrong page. Here it is. Apparently, Gonzales did meet with Minister-level functionaries but not President Kirchner.

Hillary and the War

The braying about Hillary needing to say she's sorry for voting for the war goes on. Hillary is willing to say she was misled. She is willing to say she wouldn't have taken us to war. But she is not willing to say she made a mistake. With the volume where it is, I think eventually she will break down and say the words.

Frankly, at this stage I don't care. This isn't about how she feels now. It's not even about her judgement then. I actually believe her when she says she wouldn't have taken the country to war. That's what bothers me. She couldn't have believed Bush was actually going to use the resolution as leverage to sue for peace... she is not a stupid woman. What she thought -- correctly, perhaps -- is that the United States would never elect a woman who was soft on a big national security vote.

It's not about the vote, it's about what the vote says about her. If you're willing to compromise yourself on an issue of life and death, then there is nothing you are not willing to compromise.