The Daily Background

On Tuesday, I wrote about Clinton’s appearance before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Missouri. Among her remarks:

“We’ve begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar Province, it’s working. We’re just years too late changing our tactics. We can’t ever let that happen again. We can’t be fighting the last war; we have to be preparing to fight the new war.”

A YouTube video of her making those statements here. As you can imagine, I was duly skeptical (and I wasn’t the only one either). To be fair, I noted that the VFW was a mostly conservative crowd, but wondered what Obama’s appearance would be like in contrast:

Now, granted, this is a different audience from, say, Yearly Kos or the AFL-CIO. It’s mostly old, conservative-ish veterans who want to stay in Iraq. But that doesn’t mean that I think Clinton should be given a pass on that. She should come back and explain to us (or if she doesn’t, reporters should ask) what she means when she uses this kind of rhetoric, such as that the surge is working, or that we have to prepare for “the new war” (does “new” sound a lot like “next” to anyone else?).
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We’ll see what Obama has to say later today. This is a different audience, but remember, this was a guy who went to the Detroit auto manufacturers and said we needed higher fuel efficiency standards, and was called naive for not pandering to them and telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.

Well, Obama made his speech to them on Tuesday, and the reviews are in. First Read (which is, incidentally, becoming more of a must read, for those of you who aren’t subscribed to it yet):

Obama brought up the Iraq War in the beginning of the speech, and then spoke about veterans’ issues — the opposite order of Hillary Clinton’s own speech yesterday to the organization. He also criticized the Iraq war much more bluntly than Clinton did. After praising the troops’ performance, he very clearly stated, “all of our top military commanders recognize that there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq.”

“No matter how brilliantly and bravely our troops and their commanders perform — and they have performed brilliantly and bravely — they cannot and should not bear the responsibility of resolving grievances at the heart of Iraq’s civil war,” he said. “No military surge no matter how brilliantly performed can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Iraq’s leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks. The only thing that they seem to have agreed on is to take a vacation.”

And what was it that Clinton said about the “surge” again? Oh yeah, “it’s working. We’re just years too late changing our tactics.” Obama called it a “complete failure” (actual quote). The Kansas City Star, in a video posted to their website, had a commentator who said “Unlike Senator Hillary Clinton Monday, he wasted little time in calling for withdrawal of troops from Iraq– a position he admitted he did not share with many veterans in the hall.”

The NYT says much the same:

Mr. Obama bluntly restated his opposition to the war, but praised the dedication of the American military. As he spoke critically of the president’s war strategy, the room fell silent, but the senator drew applause as he pledged to improve services for veterans.

“Whatever disagreements we have on policy, there will be no daylight between us when it comes to honoring the men and women who serve and keeping faith with our veterans,” Mr. Obama said. “This is not a partisan issue. This is not a Democratic or a Republican issue.”

That’s something I like– a candidate whose position doesn’t change or whose message doesn’t water down depending on what audience he’s talking to. When he’s courting auto-makers, he’s up front with them about the fact that he believes higher fuel efficiency standards are vital. When he’s courting a mostly-conservative group like the the VFW, he doesn’t pretend that his position is something it’s not.

You can read a transcript of Obama’s full speech here. One phrase we can expect will surface later on: “When I am President, building a 21st century VA to serve our veterans will be an equal priority to building a 21st century military to fight our wars. My Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs will be just as important as my Secretary of Defense. No more shortfalls – it’s time to fully fund the VA medical center.”

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