Posted on 06/28/2005 8:40:46 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
From the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is being hailed for her latest public scolding of America's Arab allies.
In what columnist David Ignatius calls the "signature line" of her speech at the American University in Cairo, Rice declared:
For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course.
What is it about Rice's speech that makes it so off-putting and irritating?
First, in treating friends, common decency and diplomacy – and the Good Book, as well – teach us that private admonition is preferable to the public declamation, which is often the mark of the hypocrite.
Second, Rice's public scolding fairly reeks of moral arrogance. Unlike my purblind predecessors, Rice is telling us, my president and I are moved by a higher, nobler cause. While we fight for democracy for Arabs and Muslims, my predecessors, going back to World War II, were only interested in "stability." Thus, they all failed.
The claim is absurd. For Rice's predecessors had to conduct foreign policy during a Cold War in which freedom was at stake and under siege from the greatest enemy the West had known since the Islamic armies invaded France in the eighth century.
Thirty years ago, during Watergate, Richard Nixon ordered a huge arms airlift to save Israel in the Yom Kippur War, for which Golda Meir was eternally grateful. Then, with Dr. Kissinger, he brokered an armistice and effected a severance of Sadat's Egypt from the Soviet Bloc – to the West. Jimmy Carter took it from there, brokering the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel that still hold.
Does Rice believe that because Nixon, Kissinger and Carter did not insist that Sadat hold elections they were on some lesser moral plane than her own virtuous self?
President Bush's father, in the Gulf War, put together a coalition of NATO nations and Arab autocracies, including the Syria of Hafez al-Assad – a ruler no less ruthless than Saddam – to expel Iraq from Kuwait in a six-week war that was a military masterpiece. U.S. casualties were a tenth of those in our current war, an end to which is not remotely in sight.
Was that Bush I achievement diminished because Saudi Arabia, which provided bases and troops, and Kuwait, the nation we rescued, were, neither of them, democracies on the New England model?
From Truman to Bush I, from Acheson to Jim Baker, with rare exceptions, U.S. Middle East policy was crafted, as it should have been, to secure the vital interests of the United States. Who is Rice, and what exactly are her accomplishments, to demean what these men achieved: victory in a half-century Cold War with the Soviet Empire?
There is another problem with this schoolmarmish scolding of Arab nations that aided this country in the Cold War, but have failed to live up to Rice's standards.
Has she or President Bush thought through the consequences should their hectoring succeed in destabilizing and bringing down Saudi Arabia or Egypt? Have they observed how the elections they've been demanding have been going of late?
In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Amal militia took every parliamentary seat. In the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas is so strong the Palestinian Authority postponed the July elections. If Hosni Mubarak held free elections in Egypt, his principal rival would be the Muslim Brotherhood. If the Saudi monarchy should hold elections, Osama bin Laden might not win, but my guess is he makes the runoff.
President Bush is riding for a fall. He sold the war in Iraq to the country on the hard security ground that Saddam had ties to al-Qaida, that he may have had a role in 9-11, that he was hell-bent on getting WMD and atom bombs, and that, when he did, he would give them to fanatics to use on Washington, D.C. The lady who stapled together that false and perhaps falsified case for George Bush was Condi Rice.
Now they tell us the war was about democracy in Iraq and the Middle East – i.e., a nobler cause than any such mundane concerns as American national security.
This is baby boomers working up noble-sounding excuses and preparing high-minded defenses in the event they wind up as failures.
When the Great Society programs of LBJ led to riots, inflation, campus upheaval, crime waves, polarization and a quarter century of almost unbroken Republican rule, liberals exonerated themselves by saying that, even though they had lost the country, they were still blameless, since their motives were so superior to those of their adversaries.
The liberals' defense of the Great Society debacles will be the neocons' defense if we lose the Middle East. But Rice's homilies about how high-minded she was will carry little weight. Americans won't buy it. Just ask Robert McNamara.
The fact that it's Pat Buchanan that's irritated and off-put immediately demonstrates that Miss Rice is once again on the right side of history.
Buchanan has become increasingly bizarre. I wonder if he's starting to lose his mind.
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In case anyone cares about Abu Pat on Condi and the mideast.
You won't be missed. Got any insights to share on the issues, or are we just posting vanities today?
Pat just can't wait for that first, thrilling, free government-mandated burqa fitting.
You need to go somewhere and sober up.
Are you the mother superior here?
If you don't like the heat, get outta the kitchen.
I'm doing just fine right here. Bring it.
Enjoy your time out.
She is not 'blaming America'. . .she is saying we have tried this. . .and that. . .and it did not work; and we are moving to other considerations.
You can schmooze these people into forever without their moving one zot forward. . .
Seems to me, Condi is simply acknowledging such and as importantly; that we no longer have the luxury of time to waste on strategies that do not bring forth the desired goals.
A spade is a spade and it is time to move on. . .
Politically correct? Perhaps not. . .
The truth? Absolutely.
I don't hate my country but I do think that guarding Europe's borders, keeping them safe while not insisting that they take responsibility for their freedom and security, and essentially purchasing their immitation-friendship for the last 60 years was a dire mistake on the part of the United States. They're our spoiled, unemployed, scumbag brothers-in-law. They will smile and talk nice as long as we're buying them dinner and paying their way. But say no to them once and America is stupid, arrogant, uncultured, and worthy of a grand cuss-out. The islamic countries are much worse. They'll not only abuse what you give them, they'll turn around and straight-up kill you with it.
Not. . .
R.J. Rummel offers a voluminous testament to the superiority of 'Free and Democratic' Governments no matter how they are 'tailored'. . .
Democratic Wars vs Non-Democratic Wars from1816-1991. . .('wars' defined as any Military action where 1,000 or more are killed).
Democracies vs Democracies: 0
Democracies vs Non-Democracies: 155
Non-Democracies vs Non-Democracies: 198
(from Small & Singer. Updated 1982 and updated later by R.J. Rummel (does not include war between ephemeral Republic of France and Republic of Rome in 1849; but rather 'stable democracies'.
I like Kool-Aid; but Condi was not serving or drinking it.
Her staement is the very model of political correctness.
"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region..."
In other words:
"Oh, the big, bad U.S., we were idiots and bullies for sixty years (a period during which all we did was win WWII and the Cold War, but who's counting). Now, with Condi in charge, everyone will be free and sit around the campfire singing kumbayah."
Now, if she had said we're going to come in there and kick ass and take names, I would be totally on board. But she didn't say that, and I don't believe she intends to do that. Maybe she's playing possum, but I doubt it. Time will tell.
In other words:
"Oh, the big, bad U.S., we were idiots and bullies for sixty years. . .]
Seems a giant leap here; after 'in other words'. . .
We are not dealing with babies; but adults who hold dear, some neanderthal world views; and for whom political correctness does not generate even a blip on their radar screen.
Condi is preparing some ground here for the now world of 'grown-ups'. . .for those who hold to a childs view; perhaps it does 'feel' like a scolding. . .and for those adults who share a limited world perspective; it may feel like a 'slap upside the head'.
But from Condi; I think it is just an eye-to-eye, realistic message and those who have a problem with it, are those who most need to 'deal with it'.
IMHO. . .
The goal is freedom not democracy. Democracy without freedom, ie an Islamist group voted into power, results in one man one vote one time.
Thus in Iraq the form of government and a Constitution is meant to ensure freedom and ongoing democracy.
"By contrast, our new best friend (and Bin Laden control center) is the undisturbed Islamic Republic of Pakistan."
By contrast we all saw the undisturbed Islamic Taliban sponsored Bin Laden attacks on 9/11 coming.
They all look stable till they are not. There's your flaw. Pakistan worries the hell out of me.
I understand what you mean. Pure democracy is, of course, mob rule. Pat's point here is that some people, given that freedom, may choose an islamofascist government ruled by sharia such as happenned in algeria.
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