She has not sought to convince anyone that statements like "We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table," are general election posturing, or should be taken to mean something other than "if diplomacy fails, I will bomb Iran in order to disrupt their nuclear program."

I take the point, and share Matt's concerns. But in this age of TV/media/youtube/etc, what exactly should she do to signal that comment X or Y is just general election posturing. At this point, she seems to have a sufficiently tight grasp on the nomination that the ambiguity is a small price to pay for avoiding reinforcing her calculating image by signaling any such thing. Put another way, what incentive does she have to openly allay the fears of people like Matt? He'd vote for her in the general anyway.

My take on it is simply that Hillary's not going to do anything she isn't confident she can succeed at. I think that precludes an Iran war during her presidency--if she gets us into any armed conflict at all, it'll be along the lines of the small, well-delineated, successful wars of the 90s.

I'd prefer there to be no saber-rattling at all, but I think it's almost Naderesque to imagine that she's at all likely to continue the current level of warmongering.

The reason for this is because out political elites value consistancy above all else. Thus Clinton, for better or worse, is buying into the idea that onec you have taken a position you can never, ever change your mind no matter what the circumstances dictate, on pains of being ridculed a "flip-flopper"

No it doesn't seem like the best way to discuss national policy, but here we are.

Meanwhile, Ezra, you're confusing me. Take this passage: it "sounds like a campaign that sees both policy and political value in a resolute willingness to go to war -- add that to her Iran statements, and it's hard to believe it's all posture."

That phrase "resolute willingness" is carefully chosen to paint HRC as a trigger-happy hawk, but surely the same phrase would accurately describe her if she had a "resolute willingness" to go to war if and only if it were absolutely necessary in the last resort. Surely you can understand that it is terribly important that HRC signal to skeptics that she would be willing to go to war if the circumstances demanded? Are you saying that you would oppose war even if circumstances demand?

And if you would not oppose that, it's difficult to see your post as anything other than a demand that HRC lie to the Democratic base, display an untrue unwillingness to go to war for political purposes. Surely that would not be something one would admire HRC for doing? If you mean to express the idea that she is trigger-happy, I'm afraid careful locutions like "resolute willingness" are not your friends. You have to call her trigger-happy.

Or else you're not being careful with language. Something doesn't add up. You're trying to paint an unreasonable unwillingness to go to war as the reasonable mark of the reasonable Democratic Party, and for obvious reasons that's going to be difficult.

I think the obvious point with Hillary is that she has never opposed a war in her public life. Not one.

So yeah, I think if she gets elected, we are staying in Iraq and bombing Iran. Either she believes in maximizing the number of American servicemembers who get killed, or she at least feels that she must maximize that number to ensure that she can amass power.

Either way, she's morally unfit to be President.

Whether real or a posture for the general, she is clearly towards the hawkish side of the Democratic spectrum. She is jealous of a President's prerogatives, and will likely surrender none that Cheney has agglomerated, particularly including those in the FP-warmaking area. She has not realized the error of Bush's first National Security Strategy, and doesn't posit war as a last, last, last resort. There isn't any indication that she is reaching down to the smarter, younger deputy and assistant level of people from Clinton 42. There isn't any indication that she has particularly thought about, let alone embraced any real change from Bush 43's national security policies.

It is, as should be obvious, on this issue that I find it impossible to support her in the primaries, and will vote for her in the general only in the interest of avoiding even worse from the Republicans, including their Supreme Court appointments.

If there is one thing we should all have learned by now, it is to ignore the aides who whisper that the candidate's actual representations are just a posture, to be safely ignored by the cognoscenti. Meanwhile, the actual representations have created templates that the actual candidate finds s/he must actually follow once in office.

Let's be a little more honest here. While hillary may talk out of both sides of her mouth when it comes to the war, I don't think anyone doubts that she is an innately hawkish person. The only people who do are her female supporters who plan to vote for her primarily on gender, and want an excuse to ignore her hawkish views. Thats where the whole 'Hillary has to be a hawk or the evil men will attack her" argument comes from. It isn't an argument that's ever honestly made, I don't think it's a belief thats actually honestly held.

People who think that a woman must automatically be less bellicose than any man forget Margaret Thacher.

If Thacher was the "iron-lady" Hillary is the "Steel-Lady". You only have to look at her expression during the debates. Half the time she forgets herself enough that her inner thoughts -- that clearly she'd like to see her opponents, among a lot of other people strung up from lamp-posts -- come blazing clearly on her face.

I don't trust her at all. I think she'd be marginally better than Guiliani, but either would be a war-monger who will complete the rape of our constitution.