Signal of Shame?

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The New York Sun

Senator Clinton would be wise to reconsider her decision to pull out of a protest rally against President Ahmadinejad. The rally has been called by the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and other Jewish groups, who are planning to gather on September 22 outside the United Nations. The Jewish groups are acting because they recognize that the nature of the Iranian’s public diplomacy is at its core anti-Semitic in a way more pointed than any such campaign since Hitler. It will be an important event, and it is right and fitting that leaders in both political parties attend.

Mrs. Clinton, however, has withdrawn over the prospect that Governor Palin will also attend. According to the Associated Press, it was from press queries that the senator learned of the governor’s plans to join in the protest. “Furious” is how the AP characterized the reaction of the senator’s aides. “Her attendance was news to us, and this was never billed to us as a partisan political event,” the AP quoted a Clinton spokesman, Philippe Reines, as saying. “Sen. Clinton will therefore not be attending.” But the fact that major figures from both parties would have been there makes the event not partisan but non-partisan.

It would, in any event, be a disappointment were Mrs. Clinton to fail to show at this gathering. Since acceding in the Senate she has emerged as a leader within the party on foreign policy. She has not always been as stalwart as we would have liked — as stalwart as, say, her erstwhile friend, Senator Lieberman. She eventually fell away on the Iraq war. Surely, though, a threat to all of us as clear as that looming in Iran would be enough for Mrs. Clinton to leave politics aside and join with so many thousands of others who understand that for Mr. Ahmadinejad to enter New York without New Yorkers gathering in protest would send a signal of shame.


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