Hillary Clinton drops by Exeter's Loaf and Ladle restaurant and talks for a few minutes with New Hampshire Public Radio's Jon Greenberg. Their conversation was guided in part by questions submitted by Exeter residents.
The list of questions was long and the time was short. Several touched on foreign policy and we began with a moral one – regardless of what the United States does next in Iraq, should this country apologize to Iraqis for triggering events that led to the death of at least 80 thousand Iraqi civilians. Senator Clinton said she didn’t think so.
Clinton: It's a difficult question to answer because in my many conversations with Iraqis — in the government, as private citizens and non-governmental organizations — there is a very considerable body of opinion that is very grateful that Saddam Hussein is gone. It's predominantly Shiite, as you might guess. But it's also Kurdish. They want the United States to begin to leave, but they do not regret the help that was given to get rid of Saddam.
Greenberg: So are you basically saying that they feel that 80,000 civilian losses is the price they would have been willing to pay absent action on our part? Is that what you're saying comes from the Iraqi people?
Clinton: I'm not saying the Iraqi people. I don't have any insight into the opinions of the Iraqi people. But for many Iraqis, you have to separate out the end of Saddam's regime from the aftermath of everything else that happened. And it's a much more — dare I say — morally complex issue for them. I have sat as close as I am sitting to you and asked leading Kurds, "How do you feel about this?" Big smiles on their faces... They feel great
Greenberg: Well, you'd expect that from Kurds.
Clinton: Well, I've asked leading Shiites. I've said, "I'm so worried about what's happening in your country." And I've been told, "Well, we're quite happy with the way things are going. It's a very different perspective. And I think we made a mistake going in, substituting American values and perspectives for what the Iraqis were thinking and feeling, and what the objective reality was. And we now have to withdraw as responsibly and quickly as possible. But we are going to have a continuing obligation, I believe, to helping the Iraqis move toward stability.
Greenberg: You've announced many plans over the course of this campaign: everything from helping families to deal with autism and death and suffering from cancer... rebuilding roads and bridges. There's a long list along with an energy plan, a health care plan and a plan to get out of Iraq. What is the guiding principle behind this vast array of plans?
Clinton: I have four goals for my presidency that guide everything that I'm trying to do. The first is to restore America's leadership in the world. And that starts with restoring our moral authority, leading by our values, reasserting who we are as a people, and working on alliances and diplomacy. And certain of what I've proposed from education and AIDS program to a new post-Kyoto protocol fits within that framework. The second goal is to rebuild and a strong and prosperous middle class, which means a revitalized economy and a 21st century safety-net framework that gives people health care, gives people the chance to afford to go to college and so much else.
The third is to reform the government. Because the government has been, in my view, incompetent, indifferent, insensitive. And the fourth is reclaiming the future for our children, which to me is the ultimate objective of being in American politics. We have to do more to give every child a chance to live up to his or her God-given potential.
So everything that I have proposed fits into one of these frameworks that I have created. I pay for everything I propose because I want to get back to fiscal responsibility, which really cuts across all of this. It's a problem for our foreign policy that we're indebted to China, and it's a problem for our kids that we're indebted to China, and that every kid comes into this world in America with $30,000 of debt on his or her shoulders.
So there's a lot of crosscutting issues. Certainly energy is a security issue and an economic issue as well as an environmental issue. And I think if you take what I've laid out here in terms of the goals — because I think it's important to talk about change not just in the abstract, but to give specifics of what we would do as a way of saying what direction we want America to go. You can see how everything I'm talking about fits into one of these objectives.
Greenberg: This comes from a mixed household. They ask, how we she refute the Republican stand that she vacillates on issues for political posturing, rather than projecting core beliefs. And please give us two or three examples of a position where she has held firm and not messaged her position or nuanced it to appeal to a particular political niche.
Clinton: (Laughing) I find it so amusing, because I think everyone who's running has changed positions on some thing, and yet I'm the object of all of this, you know, talk. I accept that. I'm held to a different standard on both sides of the aisle.
Greenberg: One of the wards of being the front-runner.
Clinton: That's right. But I do think that it is way off base. I have been, for 35 years, working on behalf of children and families and women. And I have core convictions that anybody can see going back my time I was in school. I have a proponent of universal health care continuously: never wavered. I have been firmly committed on a range of education and human service issues; you can look at my record and see. And it is something that I accept, I have to answer and be ready to respond. But I think it is only fair that others begin to be asked about their less-than-clear positions, let us say. Or about their abrupt 180-degree reversals that have occurred in the course of this campaign.
Senator Clinton answered several other questions. On nuclear power plants, she said her energy plan assumes that most existing plants will remain open. She said companies should not build new ones unless the country solves the problem of nuclear waste and researchers develop new plants that are safer and cheaper than current ones.
She also defended her vote that labeled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. She said doing so made it easier to block the bank accounts of that group which in turn would make a diplomatic solution more likely. She emphasized that nothing in her vote gave the administration a free hand to engage in military action against Iran.
For NHPR News, I’m Jon Greenberg.
