Book: Hillary so Calculating, She Got Bill to NOT Intervene in Bosnia 4 HillaryCare! So 250,000 Died

[Dems Will Win]

I remember this. Being enraged that Clinton did not intervene in Bosnia for 4 years and let all those people die. Now we know why! Hillary was trying to protect her precious, doomed health care intiative! This is the real story behind the story.

250,000 died in those 4 years Hil stopped Bill from acting.

When Clinton did finally intervene with NATO bombing, the fighting was over really quickly -- it was no Vietnam (although there is still tension and many problems), and we had the Dayton Accords. Later there was Kosovo, but that was over quickly too. Even the concentration camps and the Srebenica massacre and rapes of July 1995 did not prompt American military action until there was a second massacre at Markale by the Serbs. Finally NATO conducted air strikes, and there was peace months later.

I posted a diary about this last week, but now I realise why, as a European actively involved in campaigning against Serb ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide, I felt so strongly about Hillary's lie about Tuzla, and all the further lies she told to disentangle herself.

But it's not just the coverup, or the lying that has really taken this to a new dimension: it's the original sin that's now at stake.

This isn't a hit diary. This is important to me personally and politically. Bosnia was for many Europeans of my generation as important as Vietnam was for Americans of a previous era. That she should use this genocidal war, it's hundreds of thousands dead, to enhance her credentials, is really shameless. That she actually was one of the voices that prolonged the genocide is completely shameful.

From Sally Bedell Smith: For Love or Politics.

Taking the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the 1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift." The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people."

I can personally witness to the truth of this, too. I can remember, first, one of the Clintons' closest personal advisers—Sidney Blumenthal—referring with acid contempt to Warren Christopher as "a blend of Pontius Pilate with Ichabod Crane." I can remember, second, a meeting with Clinton's then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the British Embassy. When I challenged him on the sellout of the Bosnians, he drew me aside and told me that he had asked the White House for permission to land his own plane at Sarajevo airport, if only as a gesture of reassurance that the United States had not forgotten its commitments. The response from the happy couple was unambiguous: He was to do no such thing, lest it distract attention from the first lady's health care "initiative."

It's not only that Hillary recklessly padded her CV, and refused to account for it in any coherent way. It's much bigger than this. He has now shown, as I always heard and suspected, that Hillary was the brake on Bill when he initially wanted to intervene and hammer the heavy Serb guns to stop the massacre of innocent civilians.

I have now found TWO contemporaneous accounts of Hillary dissuading Bill from intervening in 1993 in Elizabeth Drew's book ON THE EDGE and Richard Reeves, RUNNING IN PLACE.

Update <2008-4-1 8:50:13 by Brit>: Though probably few are reading this by now, I've now come across an interview with Richard Reeves from NPR's Frontline in 1996, which confirms, in Bill's words, Hillary's influence.

This is from an interview with Richard Reeves on PBS Frontline in 1996. (My emphasis)

"I think the Bosnian policy of the United States, which I don't disapprove of, is a perfect example of the Clinton presidency. That is, the President wakes up new each morning and so we have had 365 Bosnian policies a day. He may have been talking about it at home, he may have read something, he may have heard something. He is open to information. This is not a closed man, which changes his take on it. The most dramatic example came toward the end of the first year, when he agreed, at a series of meetings on policy called "Lift and Strike," TO lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims and strike at Bosnian- Serb targets. That happened on a Friday. Warren Christopher went to Europe to tell NATO allies what we were going to do, and that Monday morning there was a meeting in the Oval Office between Clinton, Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff, and Les Aspin, then Secretary of Defense.

And as he walked into the room, Clinton was carrying a book called Balkan Ghosts, by Robert Kaplan. And he said, "My wife read this and I read some of it too. And it says that we can't succeed doing anything in that society. They've been killing each other for thousands of years and they're going to keep doing it." And Les Aspin said later, he was sitting there thinking, "He's going to go south on Lift and Strike." And he called Europe, got Christopher, and said, "Don't say anything. The President's going to change his mind." And in fact the President did.

You can also find the anecdote scattered around various blogs - just google Hillary and Robert D. Kaplan's (pernicious book) Balkan Ghosts

Update <2008-3-31 21:4:41 by Brit>: Since Hitchens has long departed these shores, and I was rather stupidly unaware of what a compromised source he is to Kossacks, I'll end on some key quotes from Cohen's article, framed with an explanation from Abie who has posted in the thread

Cohen eloquently makes the same argument as Hitchens:

Only after the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, three years after the initial Serbian genocide of 1992 against that population (and one year after a genocide on his watch in Rwanda), did the gelatinous Clinton develop some backbone. NATO bombed, Richard Holbrooke did his brilliant work at Dayton in November 1995, and the guns fell silent in Bosnia.

No need to beat up Hills any longer on her fairy tale, but he makes a very important point, going well beyond the issue of lying, but rather puts the lie in context:

Hillary Clinton’s transference is intriguing: Suffering Sarajevans ran from snipers during the war her husband let fester. Invented danger, supposed to showcase bravery, may instead betray guilt.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Politics-Hillary-Clinton-White/dp/1400063248/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207013773&sr=1-1