FRONTLINE - "The Triumph of Evil"Air Date: January 26, 1999
<snip>
NARRATOR: In March 1998, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was consuming his presidency, Bill Clinton escaped to Africa, to make his long-planned tour of the continent. He had come to offer hope, to strengthen America's commitment to Africa, and on this afternoon in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, he had come to apologize.
Pres. BILL CLINTON: I have come today to pay the respects of my nation to all who suffered and all who perished in the Rwandan genocide.
NARRATOR: The genocide five years ago in Rwanda was meticulously planned and brutally executed, the methodical slaughter of over 800,000 Tutsis and their sympathizers.
Pres. BILL CLINTON: It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.
NARRATOR: The story behind President Clinton's dramatic apology for the world's failure in Rwanda
is a story about the triumph of evil, which the philosopher Edmund Burke observed happens when good men do nothing....
...
NARRATOR: In mid-July, the Tutsi-led guerrillas finally won the war. The killers were defeated. The Hutu genocide was over. With their hoes and machetes, the extremists had killed three times faster than the Nazis. An estimated 800,000 people had been murdered in 100 days. Four years later, President Clinton made his pilgrimage of contrition to Rwanda.
Pres. BILL CLINTON: I have come today to pay the respects of my nation to all who suffered and all who perished in the Rwandan genocide. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed-
NARRATOR: In his speech, the president would use the word "genocide" 11 times.
Pres. BILL CLINTON: We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name, genocide.
MICHAEL BARNETT: It was meaningless. It was hollow. It was unclear to me what he was apologizing for and for whom he was apologizing. He didn't say "I take personal responsibility for the failure of the United States, the international community to do something to stop genocide." He made, as I recall, some kind of vague reference to the failure of the international community to act and to help the Rwandans in their hour of need.Pres. BILL CLINTON: It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices day after day after day who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.
JAMES WOODS, Deputy Asst, Secretary of Defense, 1986-94: Well, I would say that responsibility starts at the top. And I know the president went to Rwanda and apologized and said he didn't really understand because he wasn't properly informed.
This is not true. They were informed. They were adequately informed.NARRATOR: Before his speech to government officials, President Clinton had a private audience with a few survivors of the genocide and listened silently to their horrifying stories.
Afterward he presented the president of Rwanda with a plaque honoring the victims of genocide. President Clinton would spend just three and a half hours in Kigali. He never left the airport, and the engines of Air Force One never shut down.PHILIP GOUREVITCH, "The New Yorker": We talk about Rwanda as a failure of US policy- a failure to intervene, a failure to recognize what was going on, and a failure to take action to stop genocide.
But if you look at the Clinton administration's approach to it throughout the entire period, what you really see is that it was actually a success of a policy not to intervene. It wasn't a failure to act. The decision was not to act. And at that we succeeded greatly.
I think that anybody who still believes that the world will not let it happen again, who believes the words "Never again," is deluding themselves dangerously.<snip>
Link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/etc/script.html**********************************************************************************************
And from Greg Craig who worked in the State Department under the Clinton Administration:
Rwanda:
Last year, former President Clinton asserted that his wife pressed him to intervene with U.S. troops to stop the Rwandan genocide. When asked about this assertion, Hillary Clinton said it was true. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that this ever happened. Even those individuals who were advocating a much more robust U.S. effort to stop the genocide did not argue for the use of U.S. troops. No one recalls hearing that Hillary Clinton had any interest in this course of action. Based on a fair and thorough review of National Security Council deliberations during those tragic months, there is no evidence to suggest that U.S. military intervention was ever discussed. Prudence Bushnell, the Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for Africa, has recalled that there was no consideration of U.S. military intervention.
At no time prior to her campaign for the presidency did Senator Clinton ever make the claim that she supported intervening militarily to stop the Rwandan genocide. It is noteworthy that she failed to mention this anecdote - urging President Clinton to intervene militarily in Rwanda - in her memoirs. President Clinton makes no mention of such a conversation with his wife in his memoirs. And Madeline Albright, who was Ambassador to the United Nations at the time, makes no mention of any such event in her memoirs.
Hillary Clinton did visit Rwanda in March 1998 and, during that visit, her husband apologized for America's failure to do more to prevent the genocide.
Link:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/03/sinbad_unloads_on_hillary_clin.html******************************************************************************************
And finally...
<snip>
Clinton, during a late December campaign appearance in Iowa, described a hair-raising corkscrew landing in war-torn Bosnia, a trip she took with her then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. "They said there might be sniper fire," Clinton said.
Threat of bullets? Sinbad doesn't remember that, either.
"I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or 'Oh, God, I hope I'm going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.'"
In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady."
Say what? As Sinbad put it: "What kind of president would say, 'Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife...oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.'"As you may have guessed by now, Sinbad isn't supporting Clinton for president. He's an Obama guy. All because of Clinton.
"What got me about Hillary was her attitude of entitlement, like he messed up her plan, like he had no reason to be there," Sinbad said. "I got angry. I actually got angry! I said, 'I will be for Obama like never before.'"
Link:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/03/sinbad_unloads_on_hillary_clin.html:shrug:
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