Hillary a diplomat? For real?

[Colobo]

March 07, 2008
Read More: Hillary Clinton

Hillary, diplomat?


A tough story from Toby Harnden, who used to be the Telegraph's Ireland correspondent:

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/Hillary_diplomat.html#comments

[TwilightGardener]

1. Monstrous exaggeration on her part. Perhaps even a lie.

[babylonsister]

2. How many countries did she visit, 80? I wonder if there's a similar

story behind all of them. Obama will do well to point this out.

[thunder rising]

3. He could have done better with a leaked meme .. it gets more press.

[Colobo]

4. Chicago Tribune: Clinton's experience claim under scrutiny

But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises.

Pressed in a CNN interview this week for specific examples of foreign policy experience that has prepared her for an international crisis, Clinton claimed that she "helped to bring peace" to Northern Ireland and negotiated with Macedonia to open up its border to refugees from Kosovo. She also cited "standing up" to the Chinese government on women's rights and a one-day visit she made to Bosnia following the Dayton peace accords.

Earlier in the campaign, she and her husband claimed that she had advocated on behalf of a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda to stop the genocide there.

'Ancillary' to process

But her involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was primarily to encourage activism among women's groups there, a contribution that the lead U.S. negotiator described as "helpful" but that an Irish historian who has written extensively about the conflict dismissed as "ancillary" to the peace process.

The Macedonian government opened its border to refugees the day before Clinton arrived to meet with government leaders. And her mission to Bosnia was a one-day visit in which she was accompanied by performers Sheryl Crow and Sinbad, as well as her daughter, Chelsea, according to the commanding general who hosted her.

Whatever her private conversations with the president may have been, key foreign policy officials say that a U.S. military intervention in Rwanda was never considered in the Clinton administration's policy deliberations. Despite lengthy memoirs by both Clintons and former Secretary of State and UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, any advice she gave on Rwanda had not been mentioned until her presidential campaign.

"In my review of the records, I didn't find anything to suggest that military intervention was put on the table in NSC deliberations," said Gail Smith, a Clinton NSC official who did a review for the White House of the administration's handling of the Rwandan genocide. Smith is an Obama supporter.

Prudence Bushnell, a retired State Department official who handled the Rwanda portfolio at the time and has not allied with a presidential candidate, confirmed that a U.S. military intervention was not considered in policy deliberations, as did several senior Clinton administration officials with first-hand knowledge who declined to be identified.

Clinton has previously described her role in the Northern Ireland peace process as meeting with women's groups to encourage them to build a political climate for peace.

Former Sen. George Mitchell, who was the lead U.S. negotiator, said Clinton's visits were "very helpful."

"She was especially involved in encouraging women to get involved in the peace process," which was a "significant factor" in the agreement, Mitchell said in an interview.

But Tim Pat Coogan, an Irish historian who has written extensively on the conflict in Northern Ireland, said the first lady's visits were not decisive in the negotiating breakthroughs in Northern Ireland.

"It was a nice thing to see her there, with the women's groups. It helped, I suppose," Coogan said. "But it was ancillary to the main thing. It was part of the stage effects, the optics.

More good stuff at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-experiencemar07,1,394674.story

[Colobo]

5. Kick for the truth.

[spindrifter]

6. Of course, HC didn't have a direct role in

U.S.foreign policy. She was not the elected president, nor was she appointed to any diplomatic position. She served as First Lady and made visits to foreign countries much like the other First Ladies who traveled. People would have been very displeased to find out that she was negotiating without a portfolio. If HC takes this much further, she will have us believing that in actuality it was she who made all the decisions not the Big Dog. This is pure and simple puffery.

[SKKY]

11. If that's the case, she'll have a lot to answer for with regards to Rwanda...

[Cogito ergo doleo]

7. K&R

:kick:

[Colobo]

8. Gobama!

[C_U_L8R]

9. true as it is

the hillarinauts will never hear it

[Colobo]

10. Here's more for them.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/06/clinton.foreign.fact/

[Muttocracy]

12. wish people were paying attention in December

weird that NY Times went on to endorse her after this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/us/politics/26clinton.html

The Résumé Factor: Those 2 Terms as First Lady

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: December 26, 2007

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: 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.”

(continues)