Bret Stephens fills us in on his assessment of her editorial board meeting with the Wall Street Journal. It only heightens my concern about her direction as Secretary of State and why she appears to be failing.
Secretary of Turbulence
Condoleezza Rice takes the long view–maybe too long.
NEW YORK–Condoleezza Rice arrives 10 minutes early for her interview with The Wall Street Journal, dressed in a red suit and a single strand of white pearls. She says “Hi, Condi Rice”–I can’t decide if this is good manners or fake modesty–and sits for a breakfast, which she doesn’t touch. No coffee or tea, either. She speaks for five minutes and takes questions for the rest of the hour…
The conversation begins with her describing herself as an academic and ends by saying how glad she’ll be to return to Stanford “and do something else.” She observes that her stint in the administration of George H.W. Bush took place at the end of one “great historic transformation,” and that her current stint takes place at the beginning of another. Her goal for the next two years is to put “some fundamentals in place”: “I don’t think that this is a battle, if you will, or a struggle that’s going to be won on George W. Bush’s watch,” she says of the war on terror. Maybe this accounts for her sang-froid–at times seeming to border on emotional detachment–in the face of all the reversals in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo and Ramallah: She chooses to read the present as if it were already the past.
This attitude, at least as described by Stephens, makes sense considering what I see as inexplicable paralyzation or retreat on the WoT from the Rice State Department. That she still sees herself as an academic explains much, including her handling issues such as North Korea and Iran more theoretically than with the life-and-death gravitas they’re worth.
On Iran, Stephens quotes her as saying: “We’ve got a chance to resist the Iranian push into the region, but we better get about it. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing that you can just let continue in its current form.” Now that we know she recognizes what must happen, her job is now to make it happen,
And on Lebanon and the so-called Palestinians:
On Lebanon: “You have to resist Hezbollah . . . [and] try to strengthen the moderate Lebanese forces, which is not an easy matter.” On the Palestinians: “You have to resist the Damascus Hamas, creating a situation in the Palestinian territories where moderates can emerge.”
“Resist” the enemy? Has she completely given up on the idea that an enemy needs to be defeated, not simply ‘resisted’?
I had so much hope for her. I will give her until the end of the year when it comes to Iran especially. If we have still made no headway with that pit by the end of December, it will be the undeniable proof of her failure and yes, incompetence, as Secretary of State.
Stephens article is much longer and more involved than the snippet I have clipped for you here. Please read the whole thing.
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Keith Laumer, the creator of the Inter-Galactic diplomat, Retief, once said that all employees of the State Department, from the Secretary on down, should be fired and banned from ever holding any other governmental office.
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