December 11, 2005

Condoleeza Rice, our current Secretary of State, has just published as an Op-Ed piece the most condescending collection of clap-trap I’ve seen in ages. She titles it The Promise of Democratic Peace, Why Promoting Freedom Is the Only Realistic Path to Security.

Shameless of you, Condi.

You quote, with obvious pride the statement by George Bush from his 2nd inaugural, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Where is the disclaimer? the correlation “we reserve the right to ignore all such rhetoric and intent when it serves our short-term political goals.”

• $50 billion to Egypt over the 24 year tyranny of Mubarak's presidency, because he allows access to the Suez Canal and allows Israel to ‘exist.’ Wow, there’s a democratic institution we continue to support (fingers down our throats). Egypt just held another outrageously manhandled ‘free election.’
• The U.S. snuggling up to Pakistan’s Musharraf, providing him with weaponry to keep his foot firmly on the backs of his own people, puts the lie to ‘promoting freedom.’
• Saudi Arabia gets the Prince Bandar red carpet treatment, along with weapons to defeat any possibility of democracy in that country. In return, they provided 12 of the 14 terrorists to fly the planes of 9-11. Chalk one up for 'every nation and culture.'
• The U.S. State Department, under your direction, promises aid to North Korea, a regime that imprisons and tortures its citizens on a massive scale. If only please they won’t confront us with nuclear weapons.

And the list could go on and on, Condi. But you get my drift. Justice, in our handcrafted Western styled idealism is supposed to be blind and what we mean by blind is impartial. Justice, properly dispensed is meant to not differentiate rich from poor, powerful from powerless, bully from paragon.

But injustice has eyes like a hawk.

The roiling sense of injustice within the Middle East is what drives terrorism. In case you missed the primer, 9-11 wasn’t about hatred of Americans or American ideals, it was specifically about America’s connivance with despots such as the Saudi Royal Family and Egypt’s President Mubarak. It wasn’t even so much our support of Israel as it was (and is) our dereliction of Palestine.

Not only have these grievances occurred in the Bush administration, Condi, so don't take it personally. It's been the policy of every administration since Franklin Roosevelt. We paid our dues on these issues. We super-powers, flooded these nations with arms and set their regimes up in what we thought was a balancing of interests against Russia. Did you ever ask Rummy why he was shaking hands so eagerly with Saddam?

You state that “the greatest threats to our security are defined more by the dynamics within weak and failing states than by the borders between strong and aggressive ones.” That doesn’t fly when you’ve been a partner to creating the divide between weak and failing and strong and aggressive.

Palestine is weak and Israel strong because of a fifty-year American policy that you now conveniently use to define the threats to our country.

That’s an intellectually bankrupt definition and appallingly apparent to those we have chosen to make weak. You write, without the slightest trace of irony, “Implicit within the goals of our statecraft are the limits of our power and the reasons for our humility. Unlike tyranny, democracy by its very nature is never imposed.”

Reasons for our ‘humility?’ A disposition to be humble? A lack of false pride? Do you know any place in the world where our actions are defined in this way?

Unlike tyranny, democracy by its very nature is never imposed? You better try to sell that to 2,000 dead Americans and 100,000 dead Iraqis. We never impose goes right up there on the wall with your boss' we never torture.

Soviet policy was your specialty at Stanford, Condi. Do you really not know how Russia and the United States set up the misery of Middle Eastern nations as if it were a chess game?

America is and always has been a self-interested nation, as all nations are. Where we fail and fail constantly, is in our intellectual dishonesty. Setting aside democratic principles when it serves our interest is duplicitous. Duplicity is not the same as pragmatism and I believe in a pragmatic foreign policy. Huxley reminds us "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored"

But you're lying to us on the history and the intent, Condi, and you make us ignorant by those lies. Then you ask the world to be blind to American ignorance.

That's a hell of a thesis within which to run the U.S. State Department.

Get out of the Archives and read what Jim's writing today