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.
What is it about Rice's speech that makes it so off-putting and irritating?
Probably that it's utter rubbish. When we actually pursued stability, we had it. When we supported the Shah and let the Israelis take care of business, the Middle East was relatively stable. When Jimmy the Weak started projecting his "compassion" into places he lacked the capacity to understand, everything began to go to hell in a handbasket. I never thought I would hear Condi Rice blame America, but there you have it.
I'd rather have a Sec. of State that is not afraid to talk tough to the Arab countries than one like the last one. Colon Bowel did everything but join Hamas,attend anti-American rallies chanting 'death to America', and strap on a suicide bomber vest himself.
You know that the SecState only enforces the policies that the President sets, right?
I like and respect Pat but sometimes...Like his last presidential run and the loon he chose as vp. I agree with a lot of this but not his conclusions about the "falsified" war.
When we actually pursued stability, we had it.
When exactly was that?
Heck, the way Pat's reacted, you'd think Condi was Jewish or something...
Pre-Ayahtolla Iran was a pretty stable place.
Powell was so bent on undermining the war on terror, our allies were legitimately asking what the hell was going on and just what American policy is, since Powell and Bush were saying the complete opposite of each other.
Pat hates to see his Arab buddies dissed; they are, after all, the only ones in the way of dem Joos dominating the world!!!
I don't deny all that Mr. Buchanan is saying about how things were done in the past, but as he points out, the situation was different then. We no longer have the Soviet Union actively trying to recruit enemies against the United States. Admittedly, Russia and France have tried to sneak around various treaties to deal with tyrants, but the situation is different. A different situation justifies a different strategy.
Bill
No freakin' doubt. From an American perspective, I don't call American Colonels being hanged by Islamic jihad, 200+ Marines in Lebanon being killed by a suicide bomber, aircraft being hijacked on a monthly basis, and random citizens around the world being bombed in pizza restaurants and shopping malls any sort of status quo to brag about.
The American liberals and islamics were chanting in unison that a war in Iraq would destabilize the region. What a whacked view they have. Saddam committing 1.5 million plus murders over 35 years, nerve-gassing 40,000 Kurds in his own country, and torture-murdering citizens in torture chambers all over the country for the sheer pleasure of it is the kind of "stability" that they want?
He defends Saudi Arabia, home of the money, ideology, and most of the fanatic Tower bombers. Pats' got to rethink his position.
Why should countries, with insignificant populations, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Quatar, be in a position to threaten the economy of the US?
If not for the US, they would have been devoured long ago.
Yet another stimulating comment sink.
Falling hard and fast should be expected when the rug is pulled out from under you.
I agree. I think his point is that the administration is putting too much faith in democracy in the ME. Didn't Algeria have free elections not long ago and the miltary had to step in after the islamists won a majority? As usual, he makes some good points and then trashes it all with some not so good points.
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