Helen Thomas: Rice is in way over her head

[n2doc]

Rice is in way over her head

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has flunked her first foreign policy crisis in the Middle East.

She went to the turbulent region last month in the early days of the war that began when Hezbollah forces in Lebanon crossed into Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Rice had orders from President Bush to oppose any immediate cease-fire, which was hardly the proper policy by the United States if it wanted to end the suffering among Israelis and Lebanese. Rice apparently was dispatched to the Middle East to pass on to Israel the message that it has the green light from the White House to do whatever it wanted and could take more time to clobber the rocket-firing Hezbollah forces in Lebanon despite Lebanese and international pleas for a truce.

Israel has taken that message to heart, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems bent on proving that he can be as tough as his predecessors.During her trip, Rice was snubbed by Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who told her she was not welcome in Beirut if the U.S. did not support an immediate cessation of hostilities. She was later blindsided in her personal visit with Olmert and other Israeli officials. During the meeting, the Israelis failed to alert Rice of their bombing massacre that day of Lebanese civilians in the village of Qana. The attack evoked worldwide indignation. Rice was notified of the attack later by e-mail from a State Department staffer. After learning the news of Qana, Rice appeared shaken and stressed out. Perhaps the human dimension of a threadbare foreign policy finally hit home.

Rice is out of her league and seems to have little knowledge about the Middle East. Rice's expertise was always on the now-defunct Soviet Union and the Cold War. Nor does she seek the advice of her former boss, Brent Scowcroft, who served as President George H. W. Bush's national security adviser. Scowcroft is a pro in Middle East diplomacy.

Her style is to lecture the leaders of sovereign countries in the Middle East as though they were school boys. When asked why the U.S. won't talk to the Syrians who she blames for sponsoring Hezbollah, she said: "Syrians have known for a long time what they need to do." Insiders claim that after her return from her Middle Eastern swing, Rice began pushing for a quick cease-fire but that Bush refused -- apparently to accommodate the wishes of the Israeli leaders who wanted more time to rough up Hezbollah.

more:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/280842_thomas11.html

[pinto]

1. Though Ms. Thomas makes some broad brush comments here, I

agree with her assessment of Rice. She is over her head. A "Soviet specialist" she is versed in Cold War tactics, especially the later Reagan era bully pulpit diplomacy. I don't see that she has the wherewithal to be an effective SOS in the Middle East.

[indygrl]

2. Helen always gets it right.

I don't understand how Condi's poll numbers stay so high.

[boomboom]

3. it's because she dresses well n/t

[cami715]

6. Probably the shoes!

[Say_What]

4. CondaSleeza has been in over her head since the beginning, she's

continually shown how little she knows about anywhere. Latin America and the Caribbean come to mind... Seems I remember Hugo saying she was an *illiterate* about Latin America.

[partylessinOhio]

5. Love that man 'cause the Bushies hate him so!

[LuckyLib]

7. Of course she doesn't seek the advice of Brent Scowcroft.

Why on earth would a Bushista seek information from anyone with actual knowledge or background on the topic?

[struggle4progress]

8. Condoleeza Rice At Stanford (LAT 2005)

Condoleeza Rice At Stanford
Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times, 1/16/05

... Improbably, the youngest provost in Stanford history and the first black and woman to hold the post helped prompt a Labor Department probe into the treatment of women and minorities ... "She was extremely autocratic in her style," said Albert H. Hastorf, a psychology professor and former Stanford provost. "She didn't brook anyone disagreeing with her" ... Members of the Faculty Senate remember her declaring over and over, "I don't do committees" ... Marsh McCall, a professor of classics who served as dean of adult education and Stanford's summer session, recalled being summoned to Rice's office after criticizing a university ad campaign. She told him, McCall said, "Either you're a member of the team, or you're not a member of the team" ... Rice drew protests and prompted a student hunger strike when she fired the university's highest-ranking Latina administrator, acting when the campus was cleared for spring break ...

http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/9732.html

[Hekate]

10. This info was actually out there when she was appointed by *

Thanks for bringing it up again.

Back when I first read that I formed an opinion of Dr. Rice as brittle. There's no question she's smarter and harder working than Bush, but she appears to become threatened easily when people oppose her.

Some people can gracefully make the transition from academia to public life, but she's not one of them, as her tendency to lecture the rest of us demonstrates. It's not a trait designed to win people over, and has very limited usefulness outside the classroom.

Same thing with her specialty, Sovietology: many PhDs in this world go on learning, growing as their subject matter changes, so the fact that the USSR is on the ash-heap of history doesn't by itself disqualify her for her present post. It's her brittleness (as I see it, or possibly arrogance), and refusal to seek help from people like Brent Scowcroft.

Helen Thomas has it right: Condoleeza Rice is in over her head. Too bad for the the US and the rest of the world.

Hekate

[struggle4progress]

11. She has poise without insight, sensitivity, or conscience. Her primary ..

.. ability seems to be that she can quickly produce verbiage which is superficially coherent and which she can utter with confidence, whether it actually reflects facts or not. Thus, in the context of the phony WMD claims, she could instantly plead "But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," despite the fact that nothing coming from the weapons inspectors suggested the Iraqis had any meaningful nuclear capabilities; similarly, she effectively ran out the clock in Congressional hearings with smooth and empty blather. And these are exactly the skills that the Administration seeks.

The stories from the Stanford years show she has no diplomatic instincts -- but, of course, the Administration has nothing but contempt for diplomacy, which in their view is simply weakness: their belief, that simply strong-arming the rest of the world, will work forever, will certainly collide unhappily with reality at some point, but the method having worked for several years, they will never properly understand the ultimate failure.

In a way, it's too bad: Condi isn't "in over her head" because she's not smart enough to understand what's needed or because she wouldn't have been capable of learning diplomatic techniques, she's "in over her head" because her innate hubris (hardened by long immersion in a ideological circle) renders her incapable of imagining ways in which she might be wrong or things that she might learn from other people. If the rebuff in Lebanon surprised her, she certainly conceptualized it not as reflecting any of her own failures but merely as evidence that "we are fighting terrorists" ...

[Hekate]

12. I agree completely. She has the skill-set the administration desires...

...as with Bolton. I constantly remind myself that when Bush makes an appointment, there's nothing accidental about the choice or the results. :eyes: In a sane world it would make no sense, but then Bushworld isn't particularly rational.

Hekate

[struggle4progress]

9. ... Statement That Kyoto Global Warming Agreement Is 'Dead'

News Release
March 27, 2001

Statement of Philip E. Clapp, President, National Environmental Trust, On National Security Advisor's Statement That Kyoto Global Warming Agreement Is 'Dead.'

<The Washington Post reported today that National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice has told European ambassadors in Washington that the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement to curb global warming, is "dead" as far as the Bush Administration is concerned.>

The President has walked away from yet another campaign promise on global warming, and infuriated our allies in the process. He pledged to craft a workable international treaty to cut global warming pollution. Declaring the Kyoto negotiations dead -- rather than proposing changes which would make it acceptable -- will delay action on global warming for years and years.

Ironically, global warming may be the Bush family legacy to mankind. The President's father gutted the Earth Summit agreement on global warming in 1992 by refusing to make it binding on the U.S. Now, nine years later, George W. Bush is walking away from the only international negotiations which have a prospect of stopping global warming.

Our European allies are furious, and believe they have been lied to. Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told European environment ministers that the policy review process was not "a backing away from Kyoto."

http://www.net.org/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=21994

[teryang]

13. This regime views diplomacy much as Hitler did

They are deluded into thinking that they are the "world's only superpower" and the "greatest power on earth."

They are completely blind to the limits on that power and the fundamental decline in the bases for that power.

Part of the delusion is that they can effectively project power deep into the Asian mainland, when such intrusion is actively opposed by the indigenous peoples. When indigenous populations elect to resist such projection by force and are supported logistically by any one of the great Asian land powers, American power projection efforts are doomed to failure. American military strength is no longer supported by manufacturing and economic strength, which have been sacrificed for blind adherence to ideological falsehoods and corporate opportunism.

Each attempt to project power which is ineffective saps the economic strength of the nation and taxes our social fabric. Each such effort has an opportunity cost in terms of crisis issues at home which are not addressed. The export and loss of manufacturing capacity, a rentier economy based upon debt, government dependency on foreign purchase of debt, a trade deficit destroying the value of the dollar, the depreciation of the national infrastructure unsupported by corporate taxation, the maintenance of a bloated defense industry tailored to cold war super weapons at the expense of commercial competitiveness and technological innovation, the increasing illiteracy of the American public, the energy crisis, the health care crisis, the aging of the population.

One might view the current overcommitment to failed military adventures in Asia as one views a severed artery on a dying patient. This regime's proposed remedy? To sever another artery by starting yet another Asian land war.

[tbyg52]

14. The whole administration is in over their heads

And have been since January 2001. Like the song says, "a spoiled, drunk 15-year-old with a gun."

Well, darn, I can't find the full lyrics online, but here's a link to the artist/album:
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/card/0,,431818,00.html