"We Just Ran With Our Heads Down"

by hilzoy

A few days ago, Hillary Clinton described her 1996 trip to Bosnia:

"I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Even before Sinbad challenged Clinton's account, I was skeptical: as I read somewhere (sorry, don't remember where), does it really make sense to suppose that if the trip was that dangerous, the President would have sent not just his wife but his only child on it?

Now, however, there is video of Clinton running with her head down through the hail of bullets. Except for, um, the running part, and the bullets part, and the part about the greeting ceremony being cancelled. It's worth watching to see the perils Senator Clinton endured. And it does support her story in one respect: as you can see in this picture, she did bend her head down on the tarmac, to hug an eight year old girl who had just read her a poem.

Harrowing stuff. No doubt all the nonexistent bullets flying around account for the fact that none of the reporters who were present mentioned any danger at the time. Obviously, they were so terrified that they repressed it all.

Honestly: there was no need for Clinton to do any of this. She did play a serious policy role in her husband's administration (even if she didn't help pass the Family and Medical Leave Act, as she claims.) The only reason for her to inflate a trip with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow into a serious diplomatic mission, and a trip to Northern Ireland involving "a visit to a women's drop-in centre and two business parks" into helping bring peace to Northern Ireland, is that by pretending to have been more involved in foreign policy than she really was, she can pretend that while Barack Obama isn't ready to be commander in chief, she is.

Frankly, though, the fact that she can't tell the difference between having an eight year old read her a poem on a tarmac and fleeing through a hail of bullets doesn't give me a lot of confidence in her grasp of military affairs. Who knows? If she were President, she might decide that she was under attack by helicopter gunships when she was actually standing in a perfectly peaceful receiving line at a state funeral, and declare war. If she thinks the video I linked to shows her running for safety in a hail of bullets, anything is possible.

Comments

[KCinDC]

Clinton "misspoke".

[russell]

It's the final confirmation that that generation has now definitely turned into their parents.

That's right, so all of you kids get off the lawn!

To be honest, I don't see that Obama advocates need to work that hard. Clinton seems determined to blow her own campaign up.

Thanks -

[Slartibartfast]

And by the way, as ‘far as you know’ Judas Iscariot was a good guy, just following divine instructions.

Dunno if this is what Anarch was referring to, but you're going to have to do some legwork to resolve the good-guy-doing-God's-work image with Judas' suicide immediately following the betrayal.

[dutchmarbel]

As an atheist for whom one religion is much like another I must confess that my first reactis is to say "alledged suicide" slarti.

[Slartibartfast]

"alleged betrayal", too?

[dutchmarbel]

I think that is a new viewpoint slarti, but my bibleknowledge is rather limited.

[xanax]

Turns out Hillary was under fire after all!

[Anarch]

but you're going to have to do some legwork to resolve the good-guy-doing-God's-work image with Judas' suicide immediately following the betrayal.

Not particularly. It could be that he betrayed Jesus reluctantly -- which is more or less what JCS says, though it's a fairly secular take on the life of Christ -- or, as per the Gospel of Judas, he was actually stoned to death by the other Apostles. [Or he used the bribe to buy a field, and God struck him down in righteous anger.] Quoth Wikipedia:

The text of the Gospels suggests that Jesus both foresaw and allowed Judas' betrayal. In April 2006, a Coptic papyrus manuscript titled the Gospel of Judas (see above section) dating back to 200 AD, was translated into modern language, to add weight to the possibility that according to early Christian writings, Jesus may have asked Judas to betray him [3]. While this seems quite at odds with the Gospel of John, where Judas is portrayed as an arch villain, the Gospel of Mark is much more ambiguous and could be considered to be fairly consistent with the stance of the Gospel of Judas on this question.

Etc. Your Theology May Vary.