So what is the leading Democrat proposing instead?

Withdrawal of the troops, and an end to the occupation, and a sober reassessment of U.S. foreign policy?

Nope.

There was Hillary Clinton instead calling for 80,000 more troops for the Army so that the United States can be fully equipped to patrol the far corners of the empire at a moment’s notice.

Hillary, the darling of the Democrats for 2008 (pssst, I don’t think she can win!), has been steadily repositioning herself on the far rightward reaches of the Democratic Party when it comes to the Pentagon.

She’s always been for the Iraq War, and she still is.

And in case you needed any other clue about where she stands, she was accompanied by Joe Lieberman at her press conference calling for more troops.

“She has emerged as a staunch ally of the armed services and a strong proponent of a forceful American military presence abroad,” as a recent profile in The New York Times noted.

But we do not need Hillary Clinton to run the empire.

We need to stop being an empire.

And for those who invest in Hillary as some sort of savior, you’re making a bad bet.

I prefer the immortal words of Milton Mayer, who for decades wrote for The Progressive: “I won’t be disillusioned because I was never illusioned.”

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine, which is one of the leading voices for peace and social justice in this country. Rothschild has appeared on Nightline, C-SPAN,the O'Reilly Factor, and NPR, and his newspaper commentaries have run in the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, the Miami Herald, and a host of other newspapers.

© 2005 The Progressive

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