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March 08, 2008

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And what a convenient moment to make this claim, when the woman formerly in the Obama campaign organization best equipped to evaluate this claim, a women who has interviewed almost everyone and read almost everything there is to read about Rwanda policy in the 1990s has just resigned and made herself un-interviewable.

Given Power's specialty, this seems almost like a claim engineered to make her head explode -- or to taunt her out of silence.

What a lovely couple they are. 'Monstrous' isn't the right word, agreed, but there's a sadistic, Rovian edge there that 'grotesque' only hints at.

look at how much it took you to explain all of that ancient history. their shiny new lie takes almost no time at all to tell.

they win!

we lose.

If she was doing her best behind the scenes, and failed to accomplish even this -- if, despite her best efforts, she couldn't persuade her husband not to advocate withdrawing UN peacekeepers just to provide cover for the Belgians -- then we really need to ask how effective an advocate she really is, especially since no one except her husband, in full campaign mode, seems to remember her efforts at all.

That's it in a nutshell, hilzoy. But will the media pick up on it? And bending over backwards as far as I can, assuming every word the Clintons say on this matter is true, it's also a devastating illumination of their characters that they couldn't disclose this earlier than this week, when the media finally questioned her bona fides in this area. This would fit in -- if true -- with Senator Clinton's inability to frame her crucial Iraq vote as a mistake that she regrets.

Dallaire's awful personal story post-Rwanda is described in his book, but here's the Wikipedia summary for anyone unfamiliar with it:

Dallaire was medically released from the Canadian Forces and retired on April 22, 2000, after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

At the time of his retirement he held the rank of lieutenant-general. Blaming himself for the failures of the mission, he began a spiral into a depression, culminating on June 20, 2000, when he was rushed to hospital after being found under a park bench in Ottawa. He was intoxicated and suffering from the reaction of alcohol and his prescription anti-depressants, the mixture of which almost put him into a coma. The story gained national headlines and sparked a fierce debate over the rules of engagement forced upon UN peacekeepers.

After the "park-bench" incident, Dallaire began writing about his experiences, started lecturing on his experiences, and was well on the road to recovery. He has since stated that during this bleak period, he considered suicide and attempted it on several occasions. Despite his personal turmoil, the months he spent in Rwanda were eventually chronicled in his 2003 book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, written in collaboration with his aide, Major Brent Beardsley. This book won the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing in 2003 and the 2004 Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

On preview: what Nell said, which is a shame (or shamelessness taking advantage of an opponent's error) but also something Powers bears a hell of a lot of responsibility for. And cleek, the paragraph I quoted might one of the handles the media needs, if they're willing to pick up on it.

Shorter hilzoy, pre-packaged for the media:

1) This is a new claim,
2) Which does not appear in any pre-existing media,
3) Which raises doubts about its veracity,
4) And, even if it is true, still falls short of giving us any reason to trust in Senator Clinton's expertise, judgment and effectiveness. If she couldn't away her husband, who can she sway?

Actually -- and I should have been clearer on this in my post -- it's not a new claim. Bill Clinton said it in December. It is new to me -- I saw it in the Chicago Tribune article and thought: huh???!!! But they said it a while ago.

"it's not a new claim. Bill Clinton said it in December."

The Rwandan Genocide occured over a decade ago (my memory is hazy on the exact year) and the first time it gets mentioned is 3 months ago? Sounds pretty new to me. Especially considering that it did not get mentioned in either of their books? (did it? The Rwandan Genocide was a rather important event in history)

As Mary said, HRC would be wise not to push this as an example of her "experience"... another failure.

I suggested that Bill C intervene in Rwanda in a conversation with my sister-in-law. Does that mean I can cross the Commander-in-chief threshold?

Some people in the State Department proposed jamming Radio Mille Collines, which was urging people on to genocide. But that didn't happen either. Why was nothing done?

Hilzoy,

Now, that's not a very fair characterization, is it? You forgot to mention the extreme cost of deploying the National Guard plane equipped with jamming gear; that asset was going to cost tens of thousands of dollars. And think about what would happen if that asset was damaged? I mean genocide is important and all, but we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars here or maybe even a whole airplane.

"The Pentagon is always going to be the last to want to intervene," he says. "It is up to the civilians to tell us they want to do something and we'll figure out how to do it."

But with no powerful personalities or high-ranking officials arguing forcefully for meaningful action, mid-level Pentagon officials held sway, vetoing or stalling on hesitant proposals put forward by mid-level State Department or NSC officials."

As I recall, the proposals weren't all that tentative since State officials were screaming for any action whatsoever.

Look, we all need to focus on what's really important: the military has lots of nifty hardware and it is very, very, very important that all that precious hardware never be endangered. Certainly not for a purpose as cheap and tawdry as stopping genocide.

Well, if he said it in December, then the "this week" portion of my post is off base, but this is still a new claim because it only showed up during this campaign and not in any pre-existing sources.

But hilzoy's best case scenario for the Senator -- that she tried and failed to influence her husband to do anything positive, let alone persuading him not to do the horrible, counter-productive things he committed to -- is still the key point.

Here's Bill Clinton on Rwanda in The New Yorker, 9/18/06:

"Later, when I asked Clinton about Rwanda, he said that the calamity in Somalia and the crisis in the Balkans had been distractions but that his inaction in Rwanda was the worst foreign-policy mistake of his Administration.

“Whatever happened, I have to take responsibility for it,” he said. “We never even had a staff meeting on it. But I don’t blame anybody that works for me. That was my fault. I should have been alert and alive to it. And that’s why I went there and apologized in ’98. I’ve always been surprised at how much they wanted me to come back, accepting my help on their holocaust memorial. Every time I ask, they say, ‘You know, we did this to ourselves, you didn’t make us do it—I wish you’d come.’ And then they always say, ‘Besides, you were the only one who ever apologized. Nobody else even said they were sorry.’ So all I can do is—I just have to face it. It was just one of those things that happen. It is inexplicable to me looking back, but when we lived it forward, in the aftermath of Somalia, trying to get the support from a fairly isolationist Congress at the time—including some elements in both parties—to get into Bosnia, where I felt we had an overwhelming national interest and a moral imperative, we just blew it. I blew it. I just, I feel terrible about it, and all I can ever do is tell them the truth, and not try to sugarcoat it, and try to make it up to them.”

I'm not sure how strong Hillary Clinton's advocacy for military action could have been if in Sept. '06 Bill Clinton is saying he was not "alert and alive" to the situation in Rwanda. How strong could Sen. Clinton's advice have been if it didn't so much as move Bill Clinton to "alert"?

You can't blame Hillary Clinton for anything her husband did as president, because she's not him! But she's got 35 years of experience working on foreign relations, and how dare you question her credentials?

Someone kill me now.

In fairness, I have heard this for many years.

Jammer -- In fairness, then, accompany that claim with some evidence.

Suppose we take Clinton's word for it, she did recommend that the US should intervene militarily in Rwanda. Was that good advice? It sounds idiotic to me - Somalia squared.

Hilzoy, is there a book on the Rwandan genocide which you'd recommend above the others? If it helps in making a selection, assume that the person you're making a recommendation to was 13 when the underlying events occurred and so might need something that does a good job of explaining even the basics.

Next week's headline:

"Hillary repeatedly warned me not to get blowjobs from Monica Lewinsky. If only I had listened to her..."

They're even willing to game the greatest genocide of my lifetime (I'm 44). Fuck them to eternity.

Is anybody really surprised?

Did anybody really expect anything different from her?

I really think this is the tone the Obama campaign has to begin to take with her: condescension.

The Hillary foreign policy gambit, as TPM has pointed out, is a very silly move. There's just no way that it doesn't backfire.

washerdreyer: Samantha Power's book is very good. There's also (switching to another medium) a very good Frontline on it; if it's available to be watched on the web, it would be a great place to start.

washerdryer - There is a blog called '100 Days of Rwanda' which recounted the events of each day in a blog post. It gives you a real sense of what decisions confronted various players in real time. It's just about the best history in a blog form that I've seen online. Blogger NYCO wrote it on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

http://www.silent-edge.org/mt/rwanda/

So this helps explain Power's statement that she is a "monster"; trying to make political hay off of her and her husband's failure to stop the genocide.

Wonder if she can be reinstated.

For those looking for more reading, Jared Diamond's recent book, Collapse includes a chapter on the Rwandan genocide that takes a somewhat different perspective than I've seen in other works. Diamond focuses on the changing resource constraints as a driver for the genocide; he locates the events of 94 in an economic context that gives some insight into sectarian motivations. Its been a while since I read other Rwandan books, but at the time, his perspective struck me as novel and useful.

I recently stumbled on a completely unrelated paper that has a rather provocative thesis: Explaining the Ultimate Escalation in Rwanda: How and Why Tutsi Rebels Provoked a Retaliatory Genocide. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to determine how accurate its contentions are.

Turbulence--Howard French, the NYT reporter, also deviates quite a bit from the standard line on Hutu/Tutsi relations , though he deals more with the aftermath than what led up to it. I read his book a few years ago--he portrays the war in the Congo following the Rwandan genocide as yet another genocide, this time with the Tutsi army as one of the villains. And he doesn't think highly of Gourevitch, the author of one of the most widely cited books on the Rwandan genocide. Here's a link--

Link

That doesn't speak to the issue raised in your link, of course. I would have guessed that events in neighboring Burundi might have had a lot to do with what happened in Rwanda in 1994. There was a Tutsi genocide against Hutus in 1972, and a Hutu genocide of Tutsis in the early 90's, at least according to wikipedia. I'd heard of the 72 genocide before.

washerdreyer asked: Hilzoy, is there a book on the Rwandan genocide which you'd recommend above the others? If it helps in making a selection, assume that the person you're making a recommendation to was 13 when the underlying events occurred and so might need something that does a good job of explaining even the basics.

I strongly recommend Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis. It’s very good on the colonial background, the Hutu Republic (1959-1990) and France’s involvement (Prunier was asked to advise the French government at one point).

joejoejoe, thanks so much for the pointer to the 100 Days of Rwanda site. Do you know where NYCO blogs or comments nowadays?

As disgusted as I am by our inaction then, at least we weren’t alone. Just as with Darfur today, the whole world just kind of stands around and watches it happen. And the UN doesn’t want to call it “genocide” because that would require them to do something about it…

It's worth bearing this background in mind when you hear Hillary Clinton claim that she advocated military intervention in Rwanda.

Also worth bearing in mind whenever the names Warren Christopher, Richard Clarke, Madeleine Albright, or Wesley Clark come up…

“show the will of the international community” – read it and weep.

Oh my forking dear.
Slimyslimysmlumy... I guess it does illuminate those thirty-five years and what being at the levers of responsible leadership have entailed.
Pretense and outrageous insults to integrity under cover of claims to deep human feeling.
Now that Prof. Power still stands near the spotlight it seems deeply fitting that she speak up for truthfulness. Herewith hoping.
In another thread LeftTurn wrote (10:48 PM, Crossing the Threshold) of growing anger in his cirlce over the state of things. This should rightly augment that anger.

It's very simple, black folks died, and Hillary lied.

She has no credentials to become president. She's manufactured a political career off her husband's name, and is quite obviously not qualified to be president of anything except maybe president of the condo association at the retirement home where she and Bill were going to wind up when this is over.

The Clintons are all done, goodbye and good riddance to Republicans in Democratic clothing. Perhaps John McCain will offer her the vice presidency, now that she sold the Democratic Party down the river. Hillary is a monster, here's the evidence.

Hillary">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/8/10246/00557/770/472129">Hillary Queen of the Monsters

:-)


I wouldn't expect too much truthfulness from Samantha Power, except when she blurts it out without thinking. I say this because it doesn't make any logical sense that someone writing a massive book on American foreign policy and genocide would leave out East Timor, where every President from Ford through Clinton (until 1999) sided with Indonesia, providing both weapons and diplomatic support for their position. It's gotten a fair amount of attention for this reason, sometimes even in the MSM, though generally they limit their discussion of the matter to the initial Ford/Kissinger decision to support the Indonesian invasion.

So it's bizarre that her book doesn't devote a chapter to it, unless she was ignorant about it when she wrote the book. I think her friendship with Richard Holbrooke provides a clue--Holbrooke is one of the leading villains in the Timorese story.

Link

Holbrooke and Power"

Holbrooke has always been interested in keeping the full story of the US role in Timor out of the press

Link

I don't think a person who wants to have political influence as a foreign policy guru can afford to offend powerful people in both parties. Samantha Power chooses to travel in those incestuous circles, where Wolfowitz and Holbrooke praise each other while working for opposing parties, and so I think it constrains what she can say.

Nell -- I believe NYCO now blogs here.

Another set of moments when US intervention would have saved Rwandan lives was when the French waltzed in, giving cover to "their" Rwandans. Clinton(s) acquiesced over the protests of Dallaire.

well done - this also makes me want to go out and get the power book.

If Samantha Power had been responding to this claim, why couldn't she say it in the United States and make a statement in a complete sentence?

Something like 'that Hillary is making a new claims in a presidential race that she tried to stop the Rwandan genocide when all the evidence is that she ignored it just like her husband, makes her a monster.

I was the Public Affairs Officer in our embassy in Nairobi during this time, and subsequently read everything I could about events in Rwanda as I was preparing to fill a USAID contract four years later working in Rwanda. The contract was eventually cancelled for internal reasons. The best book for understanding the whole picture is the Prunier book and I spoke to him at length on the phone while preparing for the USAID contract.

Remember that one-third of Rwanda's people were either killed or displaced -- a figure that approximates what happened in Pol Pot's Cambodia. It was truly a horrendous time, and as someone noted, followed and preceeded similar events in neighoring Burundi and Zaire (now Congo).

The thing that makes me angriest about our lack of response is that the smallest intervention on our part would have changed the outcome dramatically. General Dellaire had called for armored cars for his UN troops, and the cars had even been painted UN white and were waiting transport, as I recall. The only nation with the airlift capacity to move 50 armored cars is -- guess who? -- the US. We demurred. Where was Hillary then?

It is true Belgium wanted us not to intervene, and asked us not to send the airlift for the armored cars. So since when is our relationship with Belgium so important that it trumps a million lives? We could have accomplished this with very little diplomatic exposure and have looked good all around, perhaps even to the Belgians. Where was Hillary when it was time to tell the Belgians "fuggedaboutit?"

I was also at the Nairobi airport when our first C-130 brought American missionaries and diplomats out of Rwanda. We had to wade through scores of French troops who were waiting to be airlifted to Rwanda, but never got the order. Where was Hillary then?

The very worst part of the event for us in Nairobi was listening to the American missionary radio net as folks in Rwanda were losing hundreds and thousands of friends. It was a horrible time. Where was Hillary then?

F

Belgium was the problem in Rwanda 1994. They had the troops and the equipment on the ground to stop the genocide.

That's what the Belgians were there for, to keep the peace. They were leading the U.N. peacekeeping force. They didn't need any Americans.

The United States had just been chased out of Somalia six months earlier. Of course, Clinton wasn't going to order another African rescue mission, and Hillary probably agreed.

But where was the Belgian leadership? All they had to do was ask Europe for another 5,000 troops, and the killing of 800,000 people would have been nipped in the bud.

Instead, as soon as Belgium lost 10 men, they ran, taking the whole U.N. peacekeeping force with them. Who was in charge of U.N. peacekeeping at the time? Kofi Anan. For his failure of leadership, he then was rewarded with his appointment as secretary-general of the U.N.

Something has gone wrong in this paragraph:

But it's worse than that. The Clinton administration did not simply fail to intervene militarily in Rwanda. It took a number of steps that made it easier for genocide to be committed. Not taking these steps would have been much, much easier than sending actual troops to Rwanda. They would have made a real difference. And yet the Clinton administration failed to take them.

It begins with steps taken that enabled the genocide, and ends being unhappy that those steps were not taken.

So if Hillary want to make this claim about advocating for intervention in Rwanda, then can't at least one reporter ask: "When? To Whom? How?" Did she bring it up over dinner with Bill? With Chelsea? Was she lobbying with State or the Pentagon?

Look, I'm a schlub in Minneapolis who felt ashamed we didn't send troops in to stop the killing. I said it to my friends. That doesn't qualify me or Hillary to be president.

Link to the study of Hillary Clinton's personality:
http://www.csbsju.edu/uspp/Clinton-HR/Character.html

In 1993 and 1994 (the Rwandan genocide started April 6, 1994), the Clintons were DISTRACTED with the Paula Jones lawsuit against the President (one of his extra-marital affairs) and the Whitewater investigation. And Vince Foster, said more to be a friend of Hillary than Bill was found dead in a park. Though it is claimed it was suicide, murder has never been ruled out. Vince Foster knew many things about the Clintons, including the land deal regarding Whitewater, that the Clintons didn't want public:
http://prorev.com/connex2.htm

Here is "small" section from this site about Vince Foster:
Just hours after the search warrant authorizing the raid is signed by a federal magistrate in Little Rock, Vince Foster apparently drives to Ft. Marcy Park without any car keys in a vehicle that changes color over the next few hours, walks across 700 feet of park without accruing any dirt or grass stains, and then shoots himself with a vanishing bullet that leaves only a small amount of blood. Or at least that is what would have to had occurred if official accounts are to be reconciled with the available evidence. There are numerous other anomalies in this quickly-declared suicide. Despite two badly misleading independent counsel reports, Foster's death will remain an unsolved mystery.

Less than three hours after Foster's body is found, his office is secretly searched by Clinton operatives, including Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff. Another search occurs two days later. Meanwhile, US Park Police and FBI agents are not allowed to search the office on grounds of "executive privilege."

Foster's suicide note is withheld from investigators for some 30 hours. The note is in 27 pieces with one other piece missing. Foster's personal diary will be withheld from the special prosecutor for a year despite being covered by a subpoena.

Samantha Power's Chapter 10 in "A Problem from Hell" which is entirely about the Rwandan genocide, she states that Clinton knew there would be no political price if he did nothing in Rwanda...indeed he perceived a political price if he did do something. And furthermore Power states that Clinton influenced other countries on the UN Security Council, that wanted to act, not to act. Because if they acted and we didn't we wouldn't look good.

Albright gives her account of the abandonment of Rwanda, here :

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/albright.html
"
q: Can you tell the story that you talk about in your book of the instructions that came to you at the U.N. about the U.S. position on calling for a full withdrawal of U.N. forces?

a: The secretary-general basically came to the Security Council with three options: either to reinforce this UNAMIR group, which really was inadequate; to withdraw it completely; or to have a kind of medium option of some reinforcement of it. My instructions were to support full withdrawal. I listened to the discussion very carefully in the Security Council. I could see that our position was wrong, and especially in listening to the African delegate, Ambassador Gambari from Nigeria, [who] was very moving on this.

a: [So] I had these instructions which made no sense at all. These were in informal meetings of the Security Council, where the real discussion goes on. I asked my deputy to take my seat while I left, and went out into the hall into these phone booths and called Washington. I decided not to call the State Department from whence my instructions really came, but the National Security Council, because they were dealing with it on a very imminent basis. Tony Lake, the national security adviser, was somebody that certainly knew a lot about Africa. He was the great expert.

a: I felt that I would get a better hearing if I called the National Security Council, which I did, and they said, "Well, no, we're worrying about this, and these are your instructions." I actually screamed into the phone. I said, "They're unacceptable. I want them changed." So they told me to chill out and calm down. But ultimately, they did send me instructions that allowed us to do a reinforcement of UNAMIR; not a massive changing of the mandate and enlarging it or withdrawing it, but the middle option allowed me to support that.

q: I have been told you talked to Richard Clarke, that the conversation was with him.

a: That is correct.
"

Kinda puts a new perspective on Clarke's "apology" for 9/11, doesn't it..

=darwin

I had the same reaction to go back and look through my books on the Rwanda genocide. I too found no mention of Hilary Clinton. I'd recommend Philip Gourevitch's "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" and Dallaire's "Shake Hands With The Devil."

And since the Clintons refuse to release any of the important White House documents of the period, we have no way to measure this claim - or any similar claims. We just have to trust that the Clintons aren't lying to us - again.

They must think we're stupid. The bad news is that most Clinton supporters are stupid.

I think this says it best:

Are You Experienced?

Hilzoy - What are the 8 books you've read. I've read Power, Gourevitch and Dallaire's and have been fascinated by all of them. Which other ones should I check out?

Geez, you mean the Clintons are lying about their role in Rwanda?

Why not start with Bill's 1998 "apology", where he claimed he was not aware of the situation:

That lie came four years after the genocide. During a 1998 presidential tour of Africa, Clinton stopped at the airport in Kigali, Rwanda, and issued an apology. Sort of. Speaking of those nightmarish months in the spring of 1994, he said, "All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror." He acknowledged that the United States and the international community had not moved quickly enough in response to the horrors under way. To emphasize his sorrow, he said, "Never again."

Maybe Hillary's advocacy for military involvement would have been effective if only she had remembered to mention to Bill that bad things were happening quickly.

Or maybe they are both lying. Another tough call!

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