A scolding from Miss Rice

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:

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.

[1) Democracy is in the eye of the beholder. 2) Democracies can and will vote out "good guys" and vote in parties inimical to our interests. 3) Where elected governments are confronted by military strong men in the ME and the third world, history is not encouraging to put it mildly.]

1/ Not if you live in Cuba or China; 'Herzogovina'. . .et al. . .not to mention, the ME. . .

2/Not if Government is a representative Democracy

3/Coup d'etat can happen anywhere; but show me a Country that has a stable 'democratic form of Government that has suffered a violent overthrow or takeover. Finding stability is the first challenge of course; but, hey. . .all things 'good'; take time to grow.

Nothing can be 'perfect'. . but .the principle of democracy is that it recognizes the individual and his inherent right to be 'free' ; the individual supercedes the 'state'. . .and of course, a 'morality' is required for any form of Democracy to work. IOW. . .Character Matters - especially, for those who sit in positions of power.

That said. . .as Rummell points out; Countries that have Democratic forms of Government do not suffer genocides. . .they do not randomly kill, innocent citizens; they do not suffer famines. . .they do not imprison their citizens based on their politics or race; they do not make war on other 'Democracies'; they are safer (and happier) neighbors. . .

(Which is 'why', the principles that GW is trying to introduce are so critical to the goals for a greater 'peace' in this world; and why as well, the amoral 'totalitarian'; power-obsessed mind rejects them at every turn).

More from Rummell:

As a government's power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all the corners of culture and society, and as it is less democratic (less moral);then the more likely it is to kill its own citizens.

There is more than a correlation here. As totalitarian power increases, democide multiplies until it curves sharply upward when totalitarianism is near absolute. As a governing elite has the power to do whatever it wants, whether to satisfy its most personal desires, to pursue what it believes is right and true, it may do so whatever the cost in lives. In this case power is the necessary condition for mass murder. . . .

. . . other causes and conditions can be operated to bring about the immediate genocide, terrorism, massacres, or whatever killing an elite feels is warranted.

Finally, at the extreme of totalitarian power we have the greatest extreme of democide. Communist governments have almost without exception wielded the most absolute power and their greatest killing (such as during Stalin's reign or the height of Mao's power) has taken place when they have been in their own history most totalitarian.

As most communist governments underwent increasing liberalization and a loosening of centralized power in the 1960s through the 1980s, the pace of killing dropped off sharply. Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100 000 000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30 000 000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked.

But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives are to be sacrificed.

This is but one reason, but perhaps the most important one, for fostering liberal democracy.

The more Countries who share democratic forms of Government; the safer our world will be. That is the best starting place for 'PEACE'. . .(no 'freedom'. . .no peace).

This is surely the underlying MO for GW efforts to bring an appreciation of 'freedom' to those who by their own cultural imprisonment; have given themselves to becoming the most dangerous people on the planet or just their victims.

R.J. Rummel is the author of several books on government murder of citizens, a listing of which can be found here. His web site, Freedom, Democide, War can be found at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel

There have been charges of anti-seminism against Pat Buchanan for a long, long time. Very little has stuck except for those charges posted by folks who want, for whatever reasons, to try and disparage this Roman Catholic who believes in America First.
Sorry, Sinkspur, your charges simply don't stick. Using words such as "obession with the Jewish race" are codewords for racism.

Read Buchanan's own words in response to unfounded charges. Note particulary the retort (at the bottom) to the William F. Buckley cite raised in your post:

For Immediate Release: March 1, 1996

Pat Buchanan - Setting the Record Straight on Anti-Semitism

Pat Buchanan has always favored a strong, independent state of Israel. He has been a lifelong friend to the Jewish people, both individually and collectively speaking.

In 1973, as a special assistant to President Nixon, he strongly supported the decision to aid the Israelis with a massive airlift that saved the country in the Yom Kippur War.

In 1976, he supported the Israeli raid on Entebbe, and in 1981 he supported the Begin government's attack on the Baghdad nuclear reactor.

In 1986, he was instrumental in getting Natan Sharanski released from the Gulag at the urging of his wife Avital.

His columns throughout his 20 years as a columnist contain numerous affirmations of his view that the U.S. has a "moral commitment - to guarantee the security and survival of the Israeli state," (as he told Human Events editor Allan Ryskind in 1992), and not a single reference that can remotely be considered anti-Semitic. Why, then, the charges?

The charges of anti-Semitism are based on political disputes; stands that Mr. Buchanan has taken over the years which have angered some columnists, lobbyists, and pundits. They are rooted, in part, in disagreements about the direction of American foreign policy, and have nothing to do with supposed expressions of racist or anti-Semitic sentiment by Mr. Buchanan.

Some of these stands include:

* His support of the "land for peace" policy in the Middle East, which is now the official policy of the Israeli government.

* His early opposition to a U.S. commitment to re-establish the Emir of Kuwait because it would put American lives at stake in a conflict that he believed was not in America's vital interest. Actually, Buchanan favored deterring Saddam Hussein's aggression in Saudi Arabia.

* His defense of John Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland auto worker, against the charge that he was "Ivan the Terrible," the Treblinka Death Camp guard responsible for the mass murder of Jews. Despite deportation by the U.S. Justice Department on the basis of evidence falsified by the Soviet KGB, the Israeli Supreme Court subsequently ruled that it was a case of mistaken identity, which Buchanan had maintained all along. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In the past six months, anonymous sources have distributed "documentation" of the charges of anti-Semitism, quoting Mr. Buchanan's past columns and public statements. These quotations -- clearly taken out of context and given the most malicious interpretation possible -- represent a transparent effort to misrepresent Pat Buchanan on issues relating to the Jewish people, Israel, and racial minorities. The following refutation of some of the more outrageous charges (in quotes) should help to set the record straight.

1."Buchanan told Elie Wiesel that President Reagan must not surrender to 'Jewish pressure' against visiting a German cemetery where SS men were buried."

* This story was originally broadcast on NBC by Marvin Kalb, soon before President Reagan made a controversial visit to Bitburg cemetery in 1985. Kalb reported that Buchanan had been observed writing, "over and over again," "succumbing to the pressure of the Jews." The alleged source of the story later told the New York Times that Kalb was mistaken about the notation, and that "This is a complete flap over nothing. . . Any criticism of Mr. Buchanan based on his notes is a bum rap." Kalb later apologized for the report.

2."In a 1977 column Buchanan called Hitler an 'individual of great courage' who possessed 'extraordinary gifts.'"

* The excerpted phrases are intended to leave the impression that the column was a tribute to Adolf Hitler. In reality, the column was, in large part, an account of historian John Toland's widely-acclaimed biography of Hitler. A characterization of Toland's depiction of Hitler, reads, "Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him." In the same column Buchanan writes that "Hitler was marching along the road toward a New Order where Western civilization would not survive." Far from an endorsement of Hitler, the column warned of making the same mistake with Mao Tse-tun and Taiwan in 1977 that deluded western leaders made with Hitler and Czechoslovakia in the `30s.

3. "In an interview in Present Tense magazine, Buchanan stated that 'if my friends in the Jewish community feel Pat Buchanan, a traditionalist Catholic, owes some kind of apology for the record of the Holy Father during World War II, they can wait, because it's not going to be forthcoming."

* The context of the comment was the demand by Bronx Rabbi Avraham Weiss for the Catholic Church to expel Carmelite nuns from their convent at Auschwitz, on the grounds that their presence there was an insult to Jewish sensibilities, since Pope Pius XII and the Church were allegedly complicit in the Holocaust. Weiss actually invaded the convent at Auschwitz to protest the nuns' presence. The Boston Herald wrote in defense of Weiss' actions, saying "The coldness of it was numbing: On the spot where one-quarter of European Jewry was martyred, the church that for 1,000 years had done so much to feed anti-Semitism intended to set up shop."

Pat Buchanan wrote a column defending the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII against the slur (which had its origins in Rolf Hochhuth's fictional play "The Deputy" in 1963), and pointing out that the contemporary testimony of Jewish leaders contradicted the charges, in fact praising Pius XII for saving Jewish lives.

4. "On the McLaughlin Report, August 26, 1990: 'There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the middle East, the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States."

* Early in the Gulf crisis, before the big buildup of U.S. ground troops in the Gulf, some columnists in the U.S. and Israeli officials were clamoring for an early strike against the Iraq. According to a contemporary account in the New York Times "Many Israeli politicians, academic experts an citizens are growing nervous, and in some cases angry, after concluding that the United States wants a political solution and is not looking for a military confrontation in the Persian Gulf.

"If the United States doesn't solve the problem now," Prime Minister Shamir's chief of staff was quoted, "Then, they'll have to fly the Marines back here again."

Many military experts agreed that such an action would risk a disaster. It was in this context that the remark was made. It was close to a month after the comment was made -- without objection from any quarter -- when A.M. Rosenthal made the first public accusation of anti-Semitism against Mr. Buchanan.

5. "In 1987 Buchanan lobbied to stop deportation of Karl Linnas, accused of Nazi atrocities in Estonia."

*Buchanan's objection to the summary deportation of Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union -- where he had been tried in absentia and sentenced to death in 1962 -- was not that a Nazi war criminal ought not to be deported and executed, but that Linnas' deportation was based on a trial in the Soviet Union where no U.S. standards of justice applied. That judgment was seconded at the time by the Washington Post, which opined that "a true and disturbing question remains whether justice by accepted American standards was done in this case, where a human life - never mind what kind of a human he may have been -- is on the line,"

6. "On March 2, 1992, at a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia, where Rabbi Avi Weiss called out, 'Your anti-Semitism makes America last,' Buchanan shot back, "This rally is of Americans, for Americans and for the good 'ol USA, my friends,"

* The comment, as reported by columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak at the time, was not directed to the Jewish protesters, but part of the campaign speech. "It is doubtful Buchanan is talking to the protesters -- an impression confirmed by reporters on the scene who did not question the candidate about it after the incident," they wrote.

7. "In 1990, before the Gulf War, Buchanan wrote that if the US went to war, 'the fighting would be done by kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown," The National Review commented that 'There is no way to read that sentence without concluding that Pat Buchanan was suggesting that American Jews manage to avoid personal military exposure even while advancing military policies they (uniquely?) engender."

* Read in context, it is clear that Mr. Buchanan is making reference to an editorial in the Economist magazine that urged, "Mr. Bush must go to war and that "the civilized world must win this fight." Buchanan was making the point that the casualties would be American, not British.

The quote from National Review's William F. Buckley, Jr., is based on his incorrect implication that the column mentioning "McAllister Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown" was in the same piece that listed A.M. Rosenthal, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer and Henry Kissinger as supporters of an early strike against Saddam. In fact, that column addressed another issue, the looming split among conservatives on the issue of the Gulf War.

It is clear from these examples that the intent of the accusers has been to twist the truth.

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