Clinton Would Stay in Iraq

Hillary has now back pedaled on a pullout of Iraq. Her guns are aimed at Al Qaeda and Iran. So it would appear she is part of the prevailing neo-con establishment. More endless war with a Clinton White House. So maybe we'll see more action from other candidates?
New York Times

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.


In a half-hour interview on Tuesday in her Senate office, Mrs. Clinton said the scaled-down American military force that she would maintain would stay off the streets in Baghdad and would no longer try to protect Iraqis from sectarian violence — even if it descended into ethnic cleansing.


In outlining how she would handle Iraq as commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton articulated a more nuanced position than the one she has provided at her campaign events, where she has backed the goal of “bringing the troops home.”


She said in the interview that there were “remaining vital national security interests in Iraq” that would require a continuing deployment of American troops.


The United States’ security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state “that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda,” she said. “It is right in the heart of the oil region,” she said. “It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests.”


“So it will be up to me to try to figure out how to protect those national security interests and continue to take our troops out of this urban warfare, which I think is a loser,” Mrs. Clinton added. She declined to estimate the number of American troops she would keep in Iraq, saying she would draw on the advice of military officers.

Ian Welsh at The Agonist pretty much sums up my point of view.

Yeah, plenty of people will spin that as ending the war, but it won't. This is a recipe for war without end. Clinton is establishment to the nines, and she wants to keep those bases in Iraq. Since a small US presence in Iraq isn't possible (becaue, ummm, the government would fall and the new government would tell the US to leave, assuming they hadn't already put the bases under siege) her plan is just pie-in-the sky.