Burn the villages, take no prisoners and salt the fields. It been a strategy of avenging armies since the Scythians, and it's been ruthlessly employed by everyone from Sherman to the Janjaweed.
It's now being employed by the Clinton campaign which is spoiling for a fight with Obama, who, so far, has decided not to step into the gutter with Hillary.
Former Senator, Princeton grad and NBA great Bill Bradley bemoans the Clinton "us or them" approach. He feels it will alienate all the new voters whom Obama has drawn into the process. On the other side of the argument, Maureen Dowd, in her NY Times column Sunday, scolded Obama, saying that he couldn't win if he was resigned to being a sissy. I haven't read that kind of anti-intellectual invective since Spiro Agnew was in office.
I have a theory that Samantha Power's calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" may not have been a mistake. I suggest that it may be brilliant tactic which allowed Obama's camp to float the idea that Clinton indeed may be monstrous (Power certainly has no affection for the Clintons as her book about the Rwandan genocide proves), while allowing Obama to "punish" his staffer and simultaneously chide the Clinton's for not doing the same to the loudmouths on their campaign staff. One could be completely cynical and suggest that it will sell a lot more books for Power (and it probably will), but in investigating her background as a war reporter, intellectual, anti-genocide campaigner and author, I've become a fan, and I think this effete, Ivy-league egghead would make a great Secretary of State.
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