I posted this last week, but now I realise why, as a European actively involved in campaigning against Serb ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide, I felt so strongly about her lie. Christopher Hitchens has made it clear. It's not only that Hillary recklessly padded her CV, and refused to account for it in any coherent way. It's much bigger than this. He has now shown, as I always heard and suspected, that Hillary was the brake on Bill when he initially wanted to intervene and hammer the heavy Serb guns to stop the massacre of innocent civilians. That she should use this war, the same war she helped to prolong, to enhance her credentials, is really deeply shameful.

The Hitch's piece is here

http://www.slate.com/id/2187780/

My original diary below

Oh and I should have realised I would get lots of 'What did you Brits do?' comments. Since I've already explained umpteen times how pusillanimous the British government were, and how I and many others really welcomed US military intervention here, I'll refer you to the previous answers I gave

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/28/132411/775#readmore

Update [2008-3-31 18:12:56 by brit]: Despite the two instances cited by Hitchens, and because no one seems to trust him or the Bedell Smith book, or Roger Cohen's article, I have also found TWO contemporaneous accounts of Hillary dissuading Bill from intervening in 1993 in Elizabeth Drew's book ON THE EDGE and Richard Reeves, RUNNING IN PLACE. This is not just spin

The genie has been out of the box for some time now, and it's not just here on MyDD, but among my female friends (many of them American), even from my Polish girlfriend, that they declare their support for Hillary because she is a woman and the first in  American history with a realistic shot for the presidency.

I accept all that. I also accept Hillary is a very talented and tenacious politician. But what I can't accept any longer is the accusation of misogyny that I (and others) regularly receive when we criticise Hillary's campaign tactics or statements. Hillary supporters would probably counter that they get accused of racism if they attack Obama. Well, that is just as wrong-headed, and two wrongs don't make a right. If we are going to heal the divisions the primary has created, we have to get beyond this racism versus sexism stalemate.

Update [2008-3-31 16:11:10 by brit]: This has just got worse. Christopher Hitchens has just posted an article in the Slate to prove what I always suspected. It was Hillary, who as reported then, was against early intervention because she'd read The Ghosts of War, and convinaced Bill that Bosnia was an ancient tribal quagmire

http://www.slate.com/id/2187780/

Bosnia is now coming back to haunt the Clintons, and so it should. Though both America, and the Clintons, are loved in Bosnia for finally forcing intervention after the Srebrenica massacre of 2005, the whole Tuzla Tale media outrage has made me revisit my feelings about the Clintons and American foreign policy in the 1990s

Let me be totally frank. In the end it took the US to silence the Serb guns which had encircled the civilian populations of Bosnia for three years. For Europeans of my generation, the final and effective use of US military power totally changed our mindset about US foreign policy. Through the post Vietnam years, especially in Latin America, myself and fellow left wingers had seen American power as mainly pernicious. Bosnia changed all that. We finally saw the use of military force for humanitarian reasons. The US showed Europeans how ineffective they were at policing their own continent.

I'm sorry folks. I've been watching on the sideline as the primary season has unfolded, and while I have dithered between various candidates,  listened to all their speeches ("just words") trying to keep an open mind, the last few weeks have confirmed it for me. I have no choice:

I WILL SUPPORT HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON FOR THE NOMINATION

Some of you (very few if any actually) will wonder after posting various comments on this site why I have decided this. It was not easy. I know I will incur the wrath of various bloggers, be trolled, lose friends and recs, and possibly even descend into a vat of oblivion. But it's now time to tell the truth as I see it. Not the urgency of now. The EMERGENCY OF NOW.