The Moral Side of War: Hillary, Bosnia’s Last Casualty

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.
‘Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day:
—Henry V, William Shakespeare

As the above suggests, society has always been somewhat tolerant in permitting certain persons to embellish war stories–as long as they were veterans, bore arms honorably, and were actually present at the engagement. After all, few care if a soldier who actually fought his way out of the Bastogne exaggerates the number of enemy he may have killed, the cold temperatures, or the men whose lives he may have saved. And most readers of Henry V believe that the words, “he’ll remember with advantages/What feats he did that day” specifically refer to a right to embellish. Perhaps it’s something that one earns by simply having been there and survived. And actually being a veteran is the only thing that makes such talk acceptable, if not entirely respectable. I’ve known a number of combat journalists, and outside of their reporting, few will personally discuss their own experiences, let alone add to it in some way to pretend to valor. Such folks have seen the real McCoy and wouldn’t think of, to paraphrase a recent author on the subject, “stealing valor.”

However, war fakers seem to come in two varieties: there are younger people wearing ragged, current issue uniforms and whose MOS now includes Winter Soldiering (and turn out to have been either Fobbitts or in drug rehab without having served a day.) And then there are the politicians. Before the internet, there were arguably more such pols, because determining whether somebody served as a Navy SEAL or in the army of the Student Deferred was so much harder than now. Today, a pol is only an internet key stroke away from having his or her career wrecked.

But Hillary, Heroine of Tuzla, has given us something new: she never claimed to have served a day in uniform but there she was with Chelsea on a Bosnian tarmac, ducking sniper fire. You see Bill had to make tough calls as commander-in-chief. And in war, somebody is always expendable. (Hey, FDR did the same thing during WWII: when Colonel Everett F. Carlson’s Second Marine Raider Battalion was ordered to raid Makin Island, the president’s son Jimmy, never physically well, still went ashore. Well, I think it’s the same thing, isn’t it?)

Meanwhile, in an irony that could stand for just how morally corrupt our political leadership has become, when General Petreaus testified before Hillary last fall, she questioned his credibility.Some might call it pure, unmitigated chutzpah.

But I’m much more forgiving. Maybe last week Hillary was just suffering from PTSD.

Or channeling Queen Boudicca.