hillary clinton has not come out and addressed this head on. she is also not participating in the debate while she campaigns over the nomination for presidency. and the entire field will have to deal with this question because the elections during wartime are elections that are about foreign policy they are about counter terrorism. they are about how we choose to do war. president obama s first and second elections were referendums on the bush wars and what those wars did to our country. and this election in a way will be a referendum on what president obama has done, how he has conducted war. how he s conducted in some cases covert war. and might not be putting boots on the ground but they can never be error-free. where accidents as we found out this week will happen. eugene robinson writes about this in today s washington post. quote if all goes as plans there are only terrorists and no civilians in the building or vehicle of war on terrorism.
and i think senator clinton was wrong in her judgments on that. i opposed going to war in iraq. senator mccain was one of washington s biggest supporters for the war. this is an area where senator cane and i have have a fundamental difference because i think the first question is whether we should have gone into the war in the first place. part of what won him the nomination against hillary clinton in 2008 was he was against the war and she was for it. and part of what won barack obama the general election against john mccain. part of what made him president of the united states was that he had been against the war and john mccain had been for it. and then when president obama got into office he had a new way of doing things. yes, he called for winding down the wars in iraq and afghanistan and that has sort of happened. or is in the process of happening, at least, but he also had a new way of doing war. a war that didn t include boots on the ground.
maybe we ll decide that this is you know, that that is not a moral problem. but i think we ought to talk about it. we re doing this in countries with which we re not at war. international law, there are questions about that. and the president says he has the authorization under the authorization to use military force against al qaeda. but i think that should be debated. what do you think though when you poll this question right now, it comes back very popular. yeah. sure. for the criticism that s been out there for the filibuster from rand paul a couple of years ago. this polls well right now. no it does poll well. and why not? because as you said we re not risking american lives. we did not risk american lives to take out that all ka qaeda compound. and that s an important thing. i m happy that we didn t risk american lives and i m happy if they got rid of bad al qaeda
covert war, the drone program was moved out of the community and into the intelligence community now run by the cia. it was less transparent. we started using drones in places where we weren t officially at war, places like yemen and pakistan. as a result of that, as a result of the decision of doing that over the last several years, there have been an emerging criticism from republicans, most notably from senator rand paul in kentucky of the path s drone war. two years all paul staged a nearly 13-hour filibuster on the floor of the senate on the topic of drones. he started it at 11:47 in the morning and he continued standing there and talking on the senate floor on his feet until 12:39 a.m. just railing against drones. and then well, then he had to stop. and i would go for another 12 hours to try to break thurman s record. but i ve discovered there are some limits to filibusters. and i m going to have to take care of one of those in a few minutes here.
he would have gone on for another 12 hours but he had to go to the bathroom. so when the news broke yesterday that the american drone strike had killed an american hostage being held by al qaeda, the politician most upset, most outraged, most forceful in stepping forward to condemn the drone program, you might think that would be rand paul. but that s not what happened. instead, dave weigel reporting that when the news broke that the american hostage was killed in the drone strike paul s campaign sent over a statement, which said, quote, it is a tragedy that these americans lost their lives. my prayers and thoughts are with their families. then moments later they sent over a statement clarifying that he was referring to the american hostage, not the only two americans who were members of al qaeda. general response from rand paul was this strike was not the kind of think he had been protesting before. on the re the other side presumptive democratic nominee