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.
I'm genuinely trying to follow you. Is that your position?
Not quite.
Terrorists are all over the world including (perhaps) in your neighborhood).
As far as anyone knows, yes, I believe the lion's share of funding comes from Saudi Arabia.
Unquestionably THE leader and CHAMPION is in Pakistan. But there are nukes there, so of course we didn't have the balls to run him down.
There is no question that the radical core of the JIHAD is the Wahabbi drek in Saudi Arabia.
But we lack the cojones to do anything in Saudi Arabia for fear of setting off a wildfire of Muslim response.
The President was sold a bill of goods and convinced himself he could win on the cheap. Big surprise.
This is the reality of the situation, not the swagger, smirk and wave of the Napoleonic pseudo cowboy.
I have no reason to doubt it.
But, I thought I told you why we preemptively invaded Iraq.
But, so many threads, perhaps I didn't.
Or, you were asleep at the switch?
Here:
Terrorists are all over the world including (perhaps) in your neighborhood).
As far as anyone knows, yes, I believe the lion's share of funding comes from Saudi Arabia.
Unquestionably THE leader and CHAMPION is in Pakistan. But there are nukes there, so of course we didn't have the balls to run him down.
There is no question that the radical core of the JIHAD is the Wahabbi drek in Saudi Arabia.
But we lack the cojones to do anything in Saudi Arabia for fear of setting off a wildfire of Muslim response.
The President was sold a bill of goods and convinced himself he could win on the cheap. Big surprise. He thought he was opening a can of "whup ass" and found worms instead.
This is the reality of the situation, not the swagger, smirk and wave of the Napoleonic pseudo cowboy.
Well hooray for you.
Now our kids are getting whacked bushwhacked on a daily basis. Are you satisfied yet?
That's right ... bushwhacked .. no chance to retaliate, just die or suffer.
Was it worth it to "whack" Saddam, you a-hole?
It became our business when Saddam started attacking American interests and funding attacks on US citizens. And you should be ashamed for condoning the behavior of a guy who is filling mass-graves with his own people for fun. Saddam doesn't bother you a bit but U.S. intervention in the evil that he visits on his own people and the rest of the world is terrible. What a wonderful view of the world.
Yeah.
Obviously.
You armchair General jerk!.
Thank you for your hot, steaming pile of BS.
Any time.
Nice language.
Knock off the personal attacks
Can you not argue without using insults?
Nope, he's just the typical armchair general around here.
We're just making friends all over the place, aren't we?
What personal attacks?
Usually.
Is that what this forum is about?
If I have to suffer fools gladly, I'm outta here!
The posts that I just restored
Now knock it off or you will get a time out
What posts?
Just curious.
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