Left Margin
Goodbye Condi
By Carl Bloice - BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Black Commentator
January 8, 2009
http://www.blackcommentator.com//306/306_lm_goodbye_condi.html
Of all the outrageous statements coming out of the Bush
Administration over the course of its eight year reign,
perhaps the most odious came from the Secretary of
State. It was the summer of 2006.
entered
Hezbollah movement and the Israeli Air Force was
raining bombs on that country and Condoleezza Rice was
laboring mightily to justify the Bush Administration's
policy of delaying a ceasefire so the Israeli military
could continue its assault that was daily claiming
Lebanese civilian lives.
Her task 'was hardly helped when she explained that the
violence that had already killed more than 400 Lebanese
and turned more than a half million into refugees
represents the `birth pangs of a new
wrote Tony Karon of Time magazine in a report titled,
'Condi in Diplomatic
and her rejection of the call for an immediate cease-
fire on the grounds that `whatever we do, we have to be
certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle
East, not going back to the old
revolutionary ring that scares the hell out of
It should have caused us all to shudder.
Imperial hubris is no stranger to Rice. She calls it
'transformational diplomacy.' The idea that prolonging
a military conflict that nearly all the world community
wants ended - and thus claiming additional innocent
lives - could usher in anything good betrays an
unvarnished arrogance seldom seen in modern
international diplomacy. But it was consistent, Karon
noted, with a proclamation she had made the previous
year about spreading 'creative chaos' in the
'Now, for Act 2, the Arabs are being told to sit
quietly while
of watching it slowly throttle
backed economic blockade, and then bomb it for weeks on
end,' Karon wrote, 'Hardly surprising that the Arabs -
from the U.S.-backed autocrats to the beleaguered
liberal democrats and the rising Islamists - see little
to cheer in the Bush Administration's `new
As New Year 2009 came she was at it again. Rice was
successfully staving off international diplomatic
efforts to prevent an Israeli ground assault on
Palestinian
conflict between the
Following a meeting with President Bush January 2, she
said the Administration would only agree to a ceasefire
'that would not allow a re-establishment of the status
quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out
of
should take place as soon as possible, but we need a
ceasefire that is durable and sustainable.'
It is obvious that what Rice calls a 'doable and
sustainable' ceasefire is one in which Hamas
surrenders. The condition that would be placed on the
Palestinians is that their ability to strike inside
on Tel Aviv to end the brutal siege of
end the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory
that is the root of the larger conflict.
After being briefed by Rice on the situation in
President Bush was asked if
in launching a ground assault. To which he replied,
'Those will be decisions made by the Israelis.' Sheer
poppycock. Few people would doubt that a phone call
from the White House to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert or from Rice to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni could have prevented the invasion. Moreover, as
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has
charged, effective United Nations action is stymied by
the threat of a
like, as was the case last Saturday. During the war in
international divide over
reiterated its demand that any cease-fire be
`sustainable,' while the European Union pressed for an
immediate end to the bloodshed.'
'Getting anything done diplomatically in the region
will require a lot more than talking about President
Bush's 'vision' of a Palestinian state and a `road map'
that is the functional equivalent of the old Beach Boys
song `Wouldn't It Be Nice' - there is no active process
associated with it, nor is there likely to be for the
foreseeable future,' wrote Karon in 2006. 'Without
revisiting the kind of peace process that the current
Israeli government has sought to avoid, the `birth
pangs of the new
'Gaza to be sure, was already a cauldron,' the
Financial Times editorialized last Saturday. 'But it
got that way in no small part because of flawed western
policies: first, through allowing the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict to stew; and then attempting to
isolate Hamas - which was democratically elected three
years ago - and doing nothing to lift the Israeli siege
that has turned
Recall when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and
South African religious leader Desmond Tutu were
denounced by the Israeli rightwing and its supporters
in the
occupied territories to past apartheid rule in South
that while he condemned suicide bombings by Palestinian
militants against
not bring it security.
for peace based on justice, based on withdrawal from
all the occupied territories, and the establishment of
a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by
side with
A new administration will take office January 21, a few
days before Rice, who previously served as national
security adviser to the President (and who played a
major role in promoting the invasion of
observing her fourth year as secretary. Her tenure has
been nothing to celebrate. Just as George W. Bush is
being cited as arguably the worst President in the
nation's history, so too Condoleezza Rice has to be
right up there with the worst - perhaps the worst -
secretaries of state. Throughout the world, wherever
she has reached over the past six years things have
turned to . well. crud. It has amounted to what the
Financial Times last week called the 'Perils of
ignoring festering conflicts' - or, in some cases, Rice
and company making matters worse. This is particularly
true when it comes to the Middle East and the
Take the conflict between
potential for a measured rapprochement between
fierce competition between the two countries over
influence in
by
emerging
Nonproliferation Agreement (which it never signed) has
only raised the stakes in the festering conflicts in the region.
into a long night of anarchy and warlordism nearly two
decades ago. After the messy failure of
in 1993, it was left to rot - until the
Islamic Courts began to provide a rough semblance of
Islamist order. That panicked the Bush administration
into backing
ago. It was a bit like taking a hammer to a ball of
mercury: the Islamists were routed but regrouped under
radical leadership, and are taking over swaths of
The common denominator in all of these foreign policy
disasters is the decisive reliance on military power,
in
and men from this country and hundreds of thousands of
Iraqis. Or, in the other cases, giving encouragement -
or the 'green light' - to aggression by clients, as
with the Ethiopians in
through their thick heads is people don't like
foreigners occupying their countries. The British and
the Russians learned that in
doesn't seem to have learned it in
'Happily, the superficial muscularity of the Bush-
Cheney era - the idea that you can bomb people into
moderation and alignment with western interests - is
about to end,' the Financial Times editors concluded.
'Barack Obama has the opportunity to approach afresh
these unresolved conflicts before they disappear into a
lethal stew of rejectionism and radicalism. He looks to
be preparing to appoint several special envoys,
including for the Middle East and
concentrated focus is needed: to identify and act on
tractable grievances before they become the property of
jihadis and extremists.' That will happen only if they
start by rejecting the ruinous policies of the Bush
Administration and the mindless bellicosity of its secretary of state.
_______________
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in
No comments:
Post a Comment