Hillary's new war

The Sun notes Hillary Clinton's rhetoric about how she is ready to end our fighting in Iraq, before Jan. 20, 2009, so that we will be ready to fight a "new war."

As Democrats scramble in the wake of the realization that President Bush's surge is working in Iraq, Senator Clinton is suddenly talking about preparing to fight a new war. She's always been a master at hedging her bets, but her speech Monday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars where she admitted that the surge she opposed is "working," beats all. In the same breath she added, "We're just years too late in changing our tactics We can't ever let that happen again We can't be fighting the last war. We have to keep preparing to fight the new war."

New Yorkers can take that to mean that, for all her flailing, she will press for passage of the retreat she has sought to legislate, the Iraq Troop Protection and Reduction of 2007. She co-authored the measure, which, her campaign Web site says, "will end the war before the next president takes the oath of office." Like every other Democrat running for president, Mrs. Clinton opposed the troop surge she now concedes is working. Some of her other legislative meddling would cap the number of troops in Iraq to pre-surge levels.

So how will she twist her positions to keep the leftist base of her party happy while she wraps up the nomination and still let everyone know that she's ready to fight some undefined new war?

So what exactly then is this Â'new war' that Mrs. Clinton says we ought to be preparing to fight? And how does she think we will win it if we just allow our current allies in Iraq to be slaughtered by the enemies we will have to fight elsewhere if they drive us from Iraq? And how are the Democrats going to lead in a new war after beating the drums so avidly for retreat in the current fight? The truth is Mrs. Clinton doesn't believe all the clap trap she's been spooling to her party's base. We hear that in private conversations with military brass, she pointedly says she will not run the war, if elected, as she promises to during the campaign -- which is one of the most astounding things we've heard of late.

If she is indeed saying different things to the military about how she plans to run the war if elected, that would be amazing. However, I'm suspicious about a leak so anonymous that no source is even implied and The Sun just uses "we've heard" to cover the story. Of course, any military official in the meeting with Hillary Clinton knows that he should not leak what was said to a friendly media outlet; but conservatives protest the use of "anonymous leakers" when the story is an anti-Bush story in the New York Times. We should be equally cautious when it's an anti-Hillary story in The Sun.

That said, however, I'd still like to know more about the "new war" that Hillary would lead us in.