Sen. Clinton is being ridiculed everywhere for the blatant lie she told about her trip to Bosnia. No amount of spinning can hide the fact that she said she "ran with their heads down to the vehicles", while in the video she is shown chatting and smiling and posing for photographs. It does not matter that they were issued flak jackets.It does not matter that some people thought there were snipers in the hills. Sen. Clinton's lie was blatant enough to put her in the same league as Bill Clinton, but of course not even close to Bush or Rumsfeld. Nobody died because of her lies.
Her lying is a tragedy for Democrats and the Nation, not just for the Clintons. Because it tarnishes not only her, but one of the shining moments of American foreign policy. The Bosnia intervention stopped a humanitarian disaster, saving the lives of thousands of Muslims who would have been slaughtered without it. This was accomplished without invading a country whole sale and without getting mired in a civil war.
President Clinton showed great foresight and judgment. He went against the conventional wisdom that air power cannot be effective in messy conflicts among subnational groups. No American lives were lost in combat (There was some loss of life from accidents and such, all military operations, even peace time training missions, are dangerous). The contrast with the Bush invasion of Iraq could not be more stark.
And Sen. Clinton has tarnished that shining legacy. It is her outrageous lie that will be associated to Tuzla from now on, not the brilliant achievement of President Clinton, Secretary Madeline Albright and General Wesley Clark.
Her lie was doubly dumb because it also overshadowed her own major foreign policy speech. The rest of the speech, which no one will read anymore, was a reasonable analysis of the situation in Iraq. Her purpose on St. Patrick Day was to mark the fifth anniversary of the disastrous war, and salvage the damage to her reputation from voting for it. Coming after Sen. Obama's historic address on race, this was her chance to show off her oratory. Both speeches are being downloaded by the millions at YouTube. For different reasons.
People's lies say a lot of themselves, even more than the truths they tell. Truth is simply what actually happened. A lie on the other hand, is a window into a person's mind, a guide to what they wish had happened. What do Sen. Clinton's lie tell us about her?
Surprisingly, her lies are rooted some of her attractive qualities. Perhaps she who would have loved to be in combat, an opportunity denied to women of her generation. There is no question that Sen. Clinton is brave, passionate and tenacious. Qualities she would have brought to battle had she been given the chance. She might in fact had been the hero of sniper battles if she had been given that chance.
Instead, she spent her adult life as a corporate lawyer and wife to a gifted but undisciplined politician. She was given precious few opportunities to directly use her fierce grasp of policy detail. When she was given the chance she often failed because of being overeager, pushing too hard when finesse was needed. The failure of her Health Plan is the most prominent example.
If she had gone into politics herself, instead of ceding the limelight to her husband, she might have made an even better politician. Certainly, she would been more disciplined, if less charming. But it didn't happen that way. It is too late to change that history.
The mismatch between her talents, ambition and her accomplishment is why Sen. Clinton often find refuge in an invented past, a past that should have been, in a fairer world. That is why many of her supporters stick with her even after her mendacity is exposed: they too might feel that her lies are only making up for an unfair world.
The movie "Six Degrees of Separation" is an exploration of a similar theme. A destitute young man talks his way into high society by pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier. Sen. Clinton had many more chances than that young man, but the basic reason she lies so often and with such convincing detail is the same. And the consequences are no less tragic.
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