In 1994, nearly a million Tutsis as well as thousands of moderate Hutus who tried to protect them were brutally massacred in Rwanda.
As First Lady, Hillary Clinton was apparently directly responsible for all of the innovations and successes of the Clinton administration but none of its or ethical lapses or mistakes; at least, that’s what one is supposed to conclude after watching Hillary’s interview with George Stephanopoulus on which aired on ABC’s This Week on Sunday morning.
I find it rather revealing the fact that ABC would assign Stephanopoulus to interview the woman who is her former boss’s wife. As the bio on the ABC News website itself notes, “Prior to joining ABC News, Stephanopoulos served in the Clinton administration as the senior advisor to the president for policy and strategy.” The interview on This Week is part and parcel of a national news media establishment that has given Hillary a pass, declining almost every opportunity to examine Hillary’s role in the Clinton administration; but it can hardly be a surprise that the corporate media (with rare exceptions) are reluctant to examine the record of the most corporate of the Democratic presidential candidates.
It was also no surprise that Stephanopoulus threw his old boss’s wife softballs, avoiding any questions that might cause Hillary any embarassment over her role in her husband’s administration. The closest that Stephanopoulus came to doing his job as the anchor of ‘This Week’ and ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent was when he asked the former First Lady about her role in the Rwanda genocide.
The genocide was dramatized in the film “Hotel Rwanda,” with Don Cheadle playing the role of Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of the hotel who displayed extraordinary courage in his efforts to save hundreds of Tutsis from certain death at the hands of machete-wielding death squads. Rusesabagina established the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation to provide “support, care, and assistance to children orphaned by, and women abused during, the genocide in Rwanda.”
In a segment aired during the course of Sunday’s interview on This Week, Bill Clinton suggests that the First Lady advised him to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. “If I had moved then, we might have saved as many as a third of those lives; and she would have done that,” the former president says of his wife. Stephanopoulus then asked the junior senator from New York to confirm her husband’s assertion, and Hillary answers in the affirmative, claiming that she would have intervened had she been president.
But other than the statement from Bill Clinton — made in full campaign mode on behalf of his wife — there is not a shred of evidence to support the contention that the First Lady urged the president to intervene in Rwanda. And because Bill and Hillary have refused to make public the papers of the Clinton administration — including the First Lady’s own documents as well as those of the president — there is no way to independently verify the Clintons’ assertion, conveniently enough for Hillary.
Speaking of Rwanda, Hillary tells Stephanopoulus, “I believe that our government failed.” But who was ‘our government’? It was, of course, the administration of Bill Clinton, in which Hillary played a leading role. The simple fact is that Bill and Hillary Clinton had it within their power to save 800,000 Rwandans from the worst genocide since World War II, but they refused to do so, despite desperate pleas from U.S. and U.N. officials in Rwanda.
Hillary Clinton is now running as the candidate with the experience to be president “on day one.” As Patrick Healy wrote recently in the New York Times (”The Resume Factor: Those 8 Years as First Lady“), Hillary is attempting to portray herself as “a full partner to her husband in his administration,” and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.” And it is certainly true that Hillary was the first First Lady to get an office in the policy-making West Wing rather than in the ceremonial East Wing, where First Ladies traditionally had their offices. But the First Lady “did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda,” Healy concludes. And the one initiative in which Hillary was given a leading role — health care reform — was a complete and utter failure, so much so that it ushered in 12 years of Republican control of Congress.
But listening to the former First Lady, it would seem that Hillary had responsibility only for the Clinton administration’s successes; unfortunate occurences such as genocide in Rwanda are the responsibility of ‘our government,’ semantically distanced by Hillary’s comments from the Clinton White House in which she was a full partner, in her own description.
Unfortunately for them, Rwandans were black Africans who could neither vote for Bill or Hillary nor vote against them and who were too poor to contribute to any Clinton presidential campaign, and so it was of no interest to Bill or Hillary Clinton as to whether they lived or died.
Digg This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bVrquf0E44
The Barack Obama campaign is about to pay a very high price for the inopportune words of one of its most distinguished foreign policy advisors. The dazzlingly brilliant journalist, Pulitzer-prize winning author, and Harvard professor, Samantha Power, has been forced to resign from the campaign after she recklessly told a reporter that Hillary Clinton is a "monster."
In the pungently hypocritical game of American politics, this is just something outside the rules. Whether it's true, or not, matters little. Nor does it matter that the object of Power's derision has just finished spending millions on TV ads implying that Obama would be responsible for the countless deaths of millions of American children sleeping at 3 a.m. Tut, tut. Nothing monstrous about that.
Power was rightfully awarded the Pulitzer for her finely written and downright horrifying book "A Problem From Hell" which, in macabre detail, describes the calculated indifference of the Clinton administration when 800,000 Rwandans were being systematically butchered. The red phone rang and rang and rang again. I don't know where Hillary was then. But her husband and his entire experienced foreign policy team - from the brass in the Pentagon to the congenitally feckless Secretary of State Warren Christopher - just let it ring.
And as more than one researcher has amply documented the case, the bloody paralysis of the Clinton administration in the face of the Rwandan genocide owed not at all to a lack of information, but rather to a lack of will. A reviewer of Power's book for The New York Times, perhaps summed it up best, saying that the picture of Clinton that emerges from this reading is that of an "amoral narcissist."
Former Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the UN forces in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, tells us a similar story in his own memoir. General Dallaire recounts how, at the height of the Rwandan holocaust, he got a phone call from a Clinton administration staffer who wanted to know how many Rwandans had already died, how many were refugees and how many were internally displaced. Writes Dallaire: "He told me that his estimates indicated that it would take the deaths of 85,000 Rwandans to justify the risking of the life of one American soldier." Eventually, ten times that many would die. And our response? A handful of years later, at a photo-op stopover in Kigali airport, Bill Clinton bit his lip and said he was sorry.
Therein resides the richest and saddest irony of all. Samantha Power has actually lived the sort of life that Hillary Clinton's campaign staff has, for public consumption, invented for its candidate. Though not quite 40 years old, Power has spent no time on any Wal-Mart boards but has rather dedicated her entire adult life rather tirelessly to championing humanitarian causes. She has spoken up when others were silent. She took great personal risks during the Balkan wars to witness and record and denounce the carnage (She reported that Bill Clinton intervened against the Serbs only when he felt he was losing personal credibility as a result of his inaction. "I'm getting creamed," Power quoted the then-President saying as he fretted over global consternation over his own hesitation to act).
We gave Power the Pulitzer for exposing the, well, monstrous indifference of the Clinton administration as it stared unblinkingly and immobile into the face of massive horror. But we give her a kick in the backside and throw her out the door when she has the temerity to publicly restate all that in one impolite word. Monstrous, indeed.
Clinton, Genocide and a Campaign Gaffe
by Marc Cooper
March 7, 2008
Well, Hillary is now aggrandizing her role in Bill's administration! She's claiming to have been more than merely married to the man that became President of the U.S. She (and all the Clinton Apologists out there) can't have it both ways. If she was as influential and as active in Bill's administration as she would now like us to believe, then she *is* partly to blame.
If Hillary Clinton had been opposed to her husband's inaction, what stopped her from speaking up? If speaking up would possibly stop the murder of children, what reason to remain silent would override saving innocent lives? She had access to the press and could have confirmed loudly and clearly that a genocide was taking place. I believe that she could have made a difference to 800,000 innocents. But it is shameful that she chose to do nothing of consequence.
I sincerely hope you were not implying that I am one of the "arrogant right wing conservative supporters of Hillary." That, sir, would be a fabrication as I am none of those things. I take exception to the author's piece based on a number of factors, as I've outlined, and your comments do not directly challenge my position. Based upon that and the fact that you felt it necessary to refer to me as a handpuppet I must construe your comments in the same vein as the author's.
I am not 100% pleased with Senator Clinton as a candidate, in fact I prefer Dennis Kucinich, but I do remain cognizant of the possibility that she could still become the Democratic nominee. Were this to become the reality I will, without shame, cast my vote for her. I will be able to do so with clear conscience and without being branded a hypocrite, which is what I believe anyone who wastes their time "Hillary bashing" and slinging excrement, as the author of the original post is doing, will be if they do the same. In the end we may all have to ask ourselves one question: If Senator Hillary Clinton were to become the nominee, who would I vote for?
Disagreeing with a candidates position is expected and one of our many cherished rights. You make a few powerful points, particularly in suggesting that we should question Senator Clinton on the issues you've highlighted, but it is not right to make assumptions, put words in her mouth, and answer the questions for her.
For the record, I would challenge the author's post regardless of who the candidate was. Discourse can be very powerful and enlightening or it can serve to contribute to the dumbing-down of America. The author's posting was not enlightening.
In point of fact many Republicans very much approve of her abberant superstitious religiosity and her right wing prowar politics. They include Pat Robertson who said “Well she's-- tacking to the right as hard as she can tack. And-- you know Hillary's got some good points.” Other Republicans who appreciate her reactionary views include Rupert Murdoch who's contributed over a hundred thousand to her, and homobigots and demented religious types like Brownback and Santorum.
Clinton was an early and eager supporter of the genocidal oil piracy in Iraq and a supporter of the anti constitutional Paytriot Act. She spent years on the board of Wal-Mart. She’s a thoroughgoing reactionary. At the Las Vegas she said Hillary Clinton gob smacked her Democratic opponents by regally accusing them of ‘throwing mud’ and reading ‘from the Republican playbook’. That’s the same rubbish being mimicked by handpuppet Rick.
Hillary Clinton runs on Bill Clinton’s record and tries to put a stop to discussion of her own. Look at her website for verification that she unashamedly runs on Bill Clinton’s record. Examine her votes for war, her pigheaded opposition to samesex marriage, her union busting and you’ll see why she wants to suppress discussion of her record. It’s entirely correct to question her about DOMA, DADT, NAFTA, genocide in Rwanda and Iraq, her relation to Bill Clinton’s shabby record and own her grubby campaign finances.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=3866786&page=1
If you click on the link to my last post to this blog site, you'll see links to the Time & Newsweek stories on this issue. Here's the url for the Time Magazine report on the issue:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1685828,00.html
Newsweek's site actually has the letter signed by Bill Clinton which explicitly instructs the Archivist of the United States to restrict access to his presidential papers as well as those of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/62133
It is precisely within the control of the Clintons to authorize such restrictions on public access to their papers, and that is precisely what they have done. Hardly a case of my 'making it up.'
Neither did I 'make up' a story about the Rwanda genocide, or the Clinton administration's refusal to intervene; after all, Bill Clinton himself admitted that he knew about the genocide as it was happening and could have stopped it but didn't; in fact, he even went to Rwanda to apologize for failing to intervene; but of course, the 800,000 Rwandans who were murdered in the genocide weren't around to hear his apology.
Pauline
Let's examine this piece: The author appears to be blaming the U.S.'s inaction in Rwanda on Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton had no decision-making authority in this matter and could not give orders, let alone commit U.S. forces. No, she just happened to be married to the man that became President of the U.S. She did what she could do - she talked to her husband.
Second, what would make anyone believe that every conversation they may have had would have been documented in their official records? Why would there have to be proof that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton had any of the conversations they claimed to have had? Because the author wants it? More likely because the absence of it allows the author to make accusations for which there is no evidence of either. The old, "If you can't prove what I'm saying is false, then it must be true" game.
In case you may have missed this in a U.S. Government or Civics class, the U.S. government consists of more than just the President. The author may do well to sign up for a refresher course with emphasis on such concepts as checks and balances and U.S. foreign policy. I'm certain it will be enlightening.
The author is quite obviously and shamelessly trying to hide her political views behind a poor attempt at thinly veiled journalism. As if her primary accusation was not enough, she felt it necessary to insinuate that Mrs. Clinton may be a racist.
Finally, I cannot stress this enough, before posting something utterly ridiculous, unfounded, and obviously biased you really should use spelling and grammar check.
In particular, I refer to the comment about the Clinton's "refusing" to release the documents of their administration.
First, all of the documents from the Clinton Administration are the PROPERTY of the national archives.
Second, Only the National Archives is leagally authorized to release documents from a presidential administration.
Third, this type of made up BS blaming people for things that are outside their control is EXACTLY the kind of tactic what one would expect from a Fox News pundit and it is disappointing to see it used here