Hillary Clinton Fantasizes About Her 'Instrumental' Role in Irish Peace Process... Again
There she goes again.
That Walter Mitty would-be-world-famous-diplomat who saved the island of Ireland and brought the peace that had eluded its leaders and negotiators for three centuries has come back.
Who are we talking about?
Well, that would be Hillary Clinton, Savior of the Celtic Isle.
It’s hard to believe, but Clinton is once again replaying her make-believe claim that she played an important role in the Irish peace process.
Don’t believe her. It wasn’t true when she made it up years ago and it’s still not true. She didn’t play any role. None at all.
By all accounts, (except her own) Hillary was a by-stander who accompanied her husband to Ireland — as any first lady would. But unlike her predecessors, Hillary had fanciful delusions about her own relevance and importance in the historical Irish peace process.
Her easily exposed fibs and exaggerations have been well documented.
The particular lines of lies about Ireland started during her 2008 presidential campaign when Clinton told National Public Radio that she played an “instrumental” role in ending the century’s old “Troubles” between the Irish Catholics and Protestants in order to shore up her involvement in something — anything — outside of domestic policy.
We exposed her growing embellishments in several columns in 2007 and 2008 and showed that it was only Bill and Hillary who believed that she had anything to do with the peace process — and they didn’t recall it when they wrote their multi-million dollar memoirs.
Even the Obama campaign vehemently denied that she had any role whatsoever. After that, she laid low for a while.
But now she’s on the loose again. In an interview at the all-women’s club, The Wing, on April 3, Hillary gratuitously threw in this line:
“I was involved in the Irish peace process and the Good Friday Accord.”
It was a throw-away line. They weren’t discussing Ireland in any way, shape, or form.
What the heck would make her go down that road again?
Just being Hillary! Remember how she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia? Except the imaginary snipers turned out to be innocent little girls handing her bouquets of flowers.
She’d been thoroughly and publicly humiliated by those dedicated public servants who actually did play a role in Ireland. David Trimble, the head of the Northern Ireland delegation who ceaselessly negotiated for peace and shared the Ulster Nobel Peace Prize for the success of the Good Friday Accord, called Hillary’s claim “a wee bit silly.” He said, “I don’t want to rain on the thing for her, but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”
Former U.S. George Mitchell, who spent years working for the peace, barely mentioned her in his book, “Making Peace,” saying only that she “encouraged women in Northern Ireland to get involved.” He also confirmed that she wasn’t “directly involved” in the process at all.
And Mitchell never referred to her in his speech at the U.N. when he received the U.N. Peace Prize.
Former IRA leader Gerry Adams, who was publicly legitimized and rehabilitated by Bill Clinton, politely recalled that “I met the senator on many occasions when she was first lady, and subsequently when she became a senator for New York State. I always found her to be extremely well informed on the issues.”
So meeting Gerry Adams and knowing the issues makes one influential in the peace process?
But throughout her campaign for the presidency in 2008, Hillary and Bill Clinton boldly rewrote history, claiming that her success in bringing peace to Ireland was all part of the vast experience that made her qualified for the White House.
What’s really funny is that they both forgot to mention her magical diplomatic skills in their respective best selling memoirs.
How odd that Hillary forgot to mention her pivotal role in Ireland just four years earlier, when she wrote her $8 million memoir, “Living History.” There, she told a very different story.
Her first mention of Ireland was in a discussion of Bill’s October 2004 trip:
The trip highlighted Bill’s milestones in foreign affairs. In addition to his pivotal role in easing the tensions in the Middle East, he was now focusing on the decades Long Troubles in Northern Ireland.” (Emphasis added.)
No memories whatsoever of her own phantom milestone or focus on the Irish “troubles.” With good reason — it didn’t exist.
Ireland next appeared in Hillary’s memoirs in her description of the Clinton’s 1995 visit to Belfast and Dublin. According to Hillary, while Bill met with the “various factions” of Irish politics, she met with women leaders of the peace movement. Rather than discuss the difficulties of the peace process and her isolation from the action, Hillary focused on a teapot used by the women:
“They poured tea from ordinary stainless steel teapots, and when I remarked how well they kept the tea warm, Joyce insisted that I take a pot to remember them by. I used that dented teapot every day in our small family kitchen in the White House…”
Other than describing the women’s fear when their sons left the house and their support for a ceasefire and an end to the violence, Hillary doesn’t cover much policy.
She then describes a visit to Derry to meet John Hume, the charming Nobel Peace Prize winner, where “tens of thousands thronged the streets in the freezing cold to roar approval of Bill and America, and I was filled with pride and respect for my husband.”
After Derry, the Clintons went to Belfast to light the Christmas tree in front of City Hall. Following the ceremony, they attended a reception.
No mention of Hillary’s deep involvement in any part of the peace process.
She must have forgotten in all of the excitement.
She mentions Bill’s speeches and meeting Ted Kennedy’s sister, the Irish president, the U.S. ambassador, and the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney. Bono and the Clintons went shopping and tried to trace Bill Clinton’s mother’s genealogy.
Not exactly heavy-duty diplomacy.
Later, she described the setback to the peace process in Omagh, Northern Ireland, where a car bomb killed 28 people and injured hundreds of others, “damaging the peace process that Bill had worked so long and hard to nurture with Irish leaders.” (Emphasis added)
Hillary does recall that in her meetings with women in Ireland, she’d spoken with them about the troubles and how to find a way to “achieve peace and reconciliation.”
Again, she was on the sidelines, the cheerleader that Mitchell recalled. The cheerleader outside that has nothing to do with the game.
Bill’s memoirs are also totally devoid of any memories of any role at all by Hillary in the peace process.
He must have forgotten a lot, too.
Other than the Christmas tree lighting and attending receptions and meeting celebrities — Bono, Seamaus Heaney, etc. — there is nothing substantive about Hillary.
But Bill Clinton later said that an unnamed man had said that Hillary had played “an independent role in the Irish peace process.”
Clinton offered no explanation of who the anonymous man was or what exactly this “independent” role was for Hillary.
But Bill does describe his own role — and Hillary was nowhere to be found:
“Good Friday was one of the happiest days of my presidency. Seventeen hours past the deadline for a decision, all the parties in Northern Ireland agreed to a plan to end 30 years of sectarian violence. I had been up most of the night, trying to help George Mitchell close the deal. Besides George, I talked to Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, David Trimble, and Gerry Adams twice, before going to bed at 2:30 a.m. At five, George woke me with a request to call Adams again to seal the deal.”
Hillary apparently slept through the night — perhaps dreaming her Walter Mitty dream of delivering the peace agreement single handedly.
But outside in the real world, she continued to be isolated from the important negotiations. When the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, visited the White House, Hillary was not invited to her Oval Office meeting with the president. Instead, she hosted an informal coffee for Mr. Robinson.
How could they possibly discuss important peace matters without Hillary?
Her claim to any role in the Irish peace process is pure fantasy.
Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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