How odd is it that Hillary Clinton has a voting record on Iraq and national security issues that is indistinguishable from those of Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., or George Allen, R-Va.?

Yes, she recently attempted to cover her left flank by declaring, "It's time for (Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld) to step down," but all she did with that statement was echo de rigueur boilerplate within her party. One suspects that within the Senate Democratic caucus, resignation demands are used as frequently as commas.

She voted for the war, refuses to renounce that vote, and continues to oppose a withdrawal date for U.S. troops. She appeared at pro-Israel rallies during Israel's fight with Hezbollah. Cindy Sheehan compared Clinton's position on the war to that of Rush Limbaugh. On Iran, Clinton has declared, "We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran — that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons." She has left no glaring antiwar vote or statement.

Clinton's votes and rhetoric since 9/11 point to a conclusion few would have predicted in the 1990s: She is a true hawk; efforts to paint her as a Ned Lamont clone or McGovernish dove just won't hold up to scrutiny. She has no visible weakness on this issue; she is unlikely to have a clumsy "I voted for it before I voted against it" moment.

Yet nearly six years of consistently voting the hawkish line have had minimal impact on her national reputation, most notably among the voters she sought to appeal to most. Confronted with her voting record, conservatives — from retired South Carolina veterans to gun owners in Virginia, from Florida military families to Pennsylvania suburban "security moms" — simply don't believe that she would govern in a hawkish fashion, or aggressively fight America's enemies.

Most often, Clinton's stands are dismissed as "political positioning" or posturing. Many contend that she is neither operationally hawkish or dovish; she simply takes the position most politically convenient and popular.

Of course, her hawkishness has cost her on the other side of the aisle. Most of the contributors at the Huffington Post despise her as a sellout on their biggest issue. On Daily Kos, posters denounce her as "sickening" and call her positions "tinged with fascism." Sen. Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis., is studying the Howard Dean playbook, trying to figure out how to take an antiwar, underdog candidacy to challenge a Washington front-runner who voted for the Iraq war.

Maybe these folks will derail her, maybe they won't. But in voting for the Iraq war and refusing to call for an immediate pullout, Clinton has managed to hurt herself with a vocal segment of the Democratic base while generating little or no correlating benefit with center-right or hawkish voters.

There is reason to believe Clinton's stance is genuine. As I detail in my book, "Voting to Kill," the events of the morning of 9/11 traumatized and transformed many American mothers as they suddenly confronted the task of protecting their children from an unimaginable threat. Clinton has spoken of her fearful moments trying to reach Chelsea, who was in Lower Manhattan that morning. I suspect the exact same 9/11 effect that dramatically affected "security moms" made a lasting impact on the senator as well. Whatever hesitations she had about hitting our enemies with relentless military force evaporated that day.

It would be a stunning irony if Hillary Clinton — distrusted by both the right and the left for what they see as her unprincipled political calculation and relentless ambition — threw away any impulse to triangulate or spin and followed her true gut instincts to endorse hawkish policies ... and then paid a significant price at the ballot box for trusting those instincts.