There have been several diaries and countless comments condemning Hillary Clinton for her Iraq War vote, and defending her from those criticisms (eg, here, here and here). Some may never be willing to forgive her that vote; others seem ready to dismiss completely those who are conerned by the vote and what it reflects in her philosophy. I’m in neither camp: I am gravely troubled by her vote for the Iraq War, but am prepared to move past it if she accepts her share of moral responsibility for that immoral war, and shows that she has truly learned from it.

Clinton took one important first step: admitting she made a mistake. In her book Hard Choices, she wrote:

When I voted to authorize force in 2002, I said that it was “probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make.” I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn’t alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.

So just what was the cost of Clinton — and all of those others who also approved the authorization for use of force in Iraq — “getting it wrong”?

189,000: Direct war deaths, which doesn't include the hundreds of thousands more that died due to war-related hardships. 4,488: U.S. service personnel killed directly. 32,223: Troops injured (not including PTSD). 134,000: Civilians killed directly. 655,000: Persons who have died in Iraq since the invasion that would not have died if the invasion had not occurred. $1.7 trillion: Amount in war expenses spent by the U.S. Treasury Department as through Fiscal Year 2013. $7 trillion: Projected interest payments due by 2053 (because the war was paid for with borrowed money). - Source: www.businessinsider.com/...

These numbers — and the human cost they reflect — show that the Iraq War was far more than just a mistake. It was a catastrophic political and moral failure. And beyond these costs in numbers, the destabilization of Iraq and the region sowed the seeds for the rise of ISIS which now confronts the US and the West with its war of terror.

Even the best of our leaders are going to make mistakes, even choices that are immoral. Politicians will get dirty hands — and sometimes we may want them to do so, when the path to achieving the best outcome may require them to take a morally wrong action. A key question then is, do they then accept the moral weight of their actions, or try to pretend that they should be free from that responsibility?

Michael Walzer wrote a piece more than 40 years ago on this concept, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands”. He described a concept that stuck with me in the many years since I first read his essay while an undergraduate student. In a nutshell, he notes that political leaders sometimes need to make decisions for the greater good but that entail morally wrong actions. His suggestion is that we want neither leaders who are unwilling to make a morally wrong choice that may be necessary — but nor do we want leaders who don’t accept the guilt that goes with their morally wrong decision. To be clear, he indicates that feeling bad about an outcome from one’s immoral action isn’t enough; one needs to accept their own guilt for it. He writes:

Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him. If he were a moral man and nothing else, his hands would not be dirty; if he were a politician and nothing else, he would pretend that they were clean.

Whatever the reasons for her vote, Hillary’s decision was morally wrong and while she bears less of the responsibility than the true architects of the war — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz — she nonetheless bears a share. Will she acknowledge that her hands are dirty — does she even recognize herself that they are dirty? Or does she believe that the decision to go to war in Iraq, or at least her role in enabling it, were morally acceptable actions about which she simply feels bad?

So what could Hillary do at this point that might inspire more confidence in me, and likely many others concerned about hawkish tendencies in the White House? She could again acknowledge that her vote on Iraq was wrong (not just a mistake), and accept the moral responsibility that comes with the part she played. Her vote (along with those of her colleagues) enabled a war of choice that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and trillions of dollars that are no longer available to invest into the desperate needs of Americans at home (what could those dollars have done for the 20% of our children living in poverty?). She can admit that she has dirty hands — not just that she was duped, but that she bears her share of the guilt for Iraq War and its terrible human toll. Knowing that she truly accepts the moral implications of her vote is a vital first step.

She can also draw from that experience to set a more positive course for the future. She could say that she now brings a stronger recognition that the use of force must truly be a last resort used only in defending the most serious of our national interests — that she intends as commander in chief to show true restraint in the use of military force.

Secretary Clinton spoke a bit on learning from the Iraq vote in Hard Choices:

As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war … I was determined to do exactly that when facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism, and humility.

Unfortunately, her recent speech before AIPAC — one that has remarkable overlap with Trump’s speech to the same group, as subir wrote — suggests that she has not learned the right lessons from the war (“right” from a progressive and peace-loving perspective in any case). Her previous comments dismissing President Obama’s “dont do stupid shit” doctrine also reinforce the idea that she is far too open to more military intervention, that she sees Obama’s view on a more restrained and collaborative foreign policy as being an unworthy organizing principle for a great nation. That gives me significant concerns about Clinton on issues of foreign policy, on war and peace.

We are a long way from November, and if as expected Clinton goes on to become the Democratic nominee, she will have many more chances to clarify the approach she would bring as President toward foreign policy and the use of military force. Recognizing her dirty hands, showing that she truly feels guilt for her part in the disastrous Iraq War, would give me some confidence that she has the right underlying moral compass. Combining that with laying out a more restrained foreign policy platform would demonstrate that her policy thinking is tracking with that moral philosophy.

Or to borrow her own words again, Clinton can go far in moving those of us concerned with her hawkish tendencies from reluctant voters to solid supporters if she lays out a vision on foreign engagement that reflects the “experience, wisdom, skepticism, and humility” she said she was determined to bring to future hard choices.