Posted on 11/16/2004 7:10:57 PM PST by neverdem
On Condi and more.
So it will be Condoleezza Rice. We must deny the temptation to ruffles and flourishes which, heaven knows, one might revel in for a good hour. A woman! An African American! An academic! Who had a high post at a tough, competitive major university! And — mirabile dictu — a conservative!
Okay, slide by that and concentrate on the theoretical and historical challenges she faces. Some of these she had a role in creating; some, she just bumped into.
Begin with Iraq. Tony Blair was just in town, injecting great drafts of high octane enthusiasm for the challenge of bringing democracy to the Arab states. In passing, we need to acknowledge Blair as a high presence on the historical scene. The stand he has taken is not popular with his own political party, but he reckons to run on his association with President Bush's crusade, and to win reelection next spring. It has to be dismaying when a major European figure makes plans which can succeed or fail according as two or three thousand insurgents do or don't succeed in aborting the democratic enterprise in Iraq. But he is surely doing the right thing.
Condoleezza Rice isn't going to win or lose in the next six months. Mr. Bush has not brought in a specialist whose credentials get validated or found spurious in 90 days. He has personal knowledge of how she winds in and out of critical decisions, and he trusts her judgment and seeks her advice.
She identifies with the optimism of Tony Blair on the general thesis that the West should encourage the growth of democracy in the Arab states. The general feeling at the moment, notwithstanding the proliferation of insurgents north, south, east, and west, is that we are headed in the right direction and that huge lessons have been learned from the experience of Afghanistan, where women, of all people, wound their way to the polls and registered their vote. The distance between the high-water mark of the Taliban and the democratic exercise in Afghanistan is little more than three years — a fleck of time in the sweep of history. But Blair, Bush, and Rice see it as a fleck in the sky which becomes a galaxy.
Political movements at a number of levels are in high motion. Arafat is dead. Can that mortality be celebrated by a renunciation of terrorism? Can a Bush-Rice team galvanize the strength of purpose needed to persuade the Palestinian populace to simply abandon the larger claim to the reconquest of Israel and generate a resilient state whose leaders are more convincingly elected by democratic means than by Yasser Arafat?
The tremors of change and challenge are felt at many levels. The CIA is undergoing major convulsions as old hands deny the acceptability of new concepts of purpose and management. Two or three senior officers are resigning, and apart from the loss of their services to their country, we need to celebrate that option: the glorious option of resigning. Nobody resigned from service to Stalin or Hitler. There is simultaneously the tradition of staying in to stand by the leader. Colin Powell did that, and leaves now after a reasonable period of identifying with a leader qua leader: which is different from the leader whose policies he always endorsed.
At a third level we have the phenomenon of U.S. soldiers who are being reprimanded and fined, and, the news tells us, here and there to face court martial — for failure to carry out orders in military circumstances. Such are the seeds of revolt. This is not going to happen to the American enterprise. The U.S. is too experienced and too proud to move towards anarchy, which always produces the autocrat or the despot.
So great ventures, democratic in composition, are struggling for historical affirmation. They are animated, ultimately, by the transcendent human ambition, which is to live as free as possible in a world in which so many claims are made on us.
I like Buckley, but for the life of me, and can't figure out what in the world he's talking about here.
Buckely went senile years ago.
They live on a separate planet but do not seem to realize it.
One HUGE exception: Mark Steyn. He doesn't try to pretend he's an intellectual. He just proves he's brilliant all the time.
He's reveling in the fact that U.S. bureaucratic and geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting and breaking, creating an opportunity for good lasting change.
That's what's so great about Buckley, most of the time you're not sure what he's talking about.
Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx describes how any major organization must be capable of a fundamental reorientation in its process at least once every 18 years. I agree. FedEx is kicking ass. Maybe Fred Smith should move to Washington D.C.
He seems positively giddy wth the changes occuring. I don't remember the last column of his I read that was brimming with so much anticipation. LOL
I share it. Normally I cringe from change, in this instance I'm reveling in being a part of a historic moment in world history. Anything can happen. For the first time in years it doesn't feel we are confined to the status quo. I'm relishing the opportunities the future holds.
When the Democrats appointed a token black woman to a high position, she immediately started talking about teaching school kids to use condoms in the back seats of their cars.
Buckley celebrates the comically ironical fact that Bush has stolen the Democrats' thunder, appointed a black woman to a high position, and what's more she's smart, trustworthy, and conservative.
Buckley celebrates the comically ironical fact that Bush has stolen the Democrats' thunder, appointed a black woman to a high position, and what's more she's smart, trustworthy, and conservative.
I think what Buckley is trying to say is that Condi is not that conservative. I don't know what mirabile dictu means, but IIRC, Condi agrees with affirmative action and gun control.
Me neither - so I looked it up in my dictionary: 'Wonderful to relate."
Thank you. Did you find that in Merriam Webster's online?
Nah - I keep a hard copy of Webster's by my computer.
Old Bill Buckley tries, but even with His magnificent intellect He has barely accepted the concept of sentient Rednecks, now He has to deal with a Black Lady with a brain and a backbone!
America is approaching fulfillment of America's ideal!
Equality in Liberty, Liberty in equality.
Dr. Rice makes this old Cherokee and Redneck proud to be an American. She is a unique and totally American product, it could not happen any other way, or in any other place.
I only hope that Rice has the intellect, wisdom and courage to drain the swamp into which she is being cast and pitch out the alligators who have stayed their generation after generation and cause our most vile problems.
Since I am very local to all this I can tell you that CIA and FBI problems are nothing to what State believes, does and causes.
I doubt, however, that having absorbed most of the Clinton trash instead of ejecting it, this administration will bring the clean up needed any more than others have.
Condi has the smarts, if She has Our support! The administration, each and every one of Them, depends on Our undivided, unwavering, support.
We won it, now, We need to protect it!
The enemy is confused, baffled, and dismayed. It is time to move forward, keep them in that position!
I am well aware of the impetus existing in the beauracracy, maybe it is time to really clean house?
We do have a mandate!
Bill Buckley-the roots of the Bush victory go back 40 years or more and Bill Buckley was no small part of that. Many of the intellectual underpinnings of the Republican victories in 1994-2000-2004 can be directly traced to his books & articles in the early 60's. Republicans owe much to him.
Dog Gone and many other folks apparently think Bill Buckley is no different from John Kerry, Hillary Clinton the carpetbagger or Mario Cuomo.
Condi has a mandate from the Oval Office to clean out the State Dept. It's about time!
must be the medication.
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