Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) has been compared to Lady Macbeth, the Shakespearean shrew who drove her husband to murder for the sake of ambition. But last week Hillary played Hamlet, pondering whether it is nobler (read: more opportune) to advocate withdrawing from Iraq or not withdrawing from Iraq. In the end, she and most Democrats tried to walk a middle line between fear of their anti-war core constituency and fear of looking soft on national security to the rest of America. While pretending not to demand a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, they backed a proposal demanding President Bush set a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.
“I simply do not believe it is a strategy or a solution for the President to continue declaring an open-ended and unconditional commitment, nor do I believe it is a solution or a strategy to set a date certain for a withdrawal without regard to the consequences,” said Clinton, as she voted for the two-faced amendment sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin (D.-Mich.).
