IF YOU DON'T EVEN RECOGNIZE THE BOX YOU'RE ALREADY STUCK IN IT:

The War on Error: Hillary Clinton's sorry nonapology (William Saletan, Feb. 20, 2007, Slate)
Five years ago, Hillary Clinton supported a Senate resolution authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq. So did I. It took me four years to admit this was a mistake. I've been wondering when Clinton would admit it. Now, from campaign insiders quoted in the New York Times, comes the answer: never. As she told voters a few days ago: "If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from."

This is an amazingly stupid and arrogant position. If she sticks to it, it will probably kill her candidacy. And it should.

According to Clinton's advisers, she has taken this position for several reasons. She believes in "responsibility" and would want congressional deference if she's president. She wants to look "firm," because that's what voters want. She thinks an apology would look like a gimmick and a flip-flop, repeating the mistakes of Al Gore and John Kerry. That's the "box" she's trying to avoid.
She ought, instead, to be avoiding the box Democrats got themselves into last war, when they abandoned the fight against Communism even as we were winning it. Bailing on the war on Islamicism makes even less sense given how much weaker it has and how rapidly the Middle East is changing.