Is there any doubt about the terrible job Condi Rice is doing at the State Department? When President Bush announced that she was his nominee to the position, this is what he had to say:
The Secretary of State is America’s face to the world. And in Dr. Rice, the world will see the strength, the grace and the decency of our country.
Yesterday, Condi Rice upheld those values of strength, grace, and decency by continuing the American policy of refusing to seek the cooperation of Iran or Syria in stabilizing Iraq because they might ask us for something that we don’t want to give. More below the fold.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday rejected a bipartisan panel’s recommendation that the United States seek the help of Syria and Iran in Iraq, saying the “compensation” required by any deal might be too high.
It is absolutely preposterous that we have a Secretary of State who refuses to even begin negotiations with a country because he or she fears the potential outcome. Let’s marvel in this statement:
She said she did not want to trade away Lebanese sovereignty to Syria or allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon as a price for peace in Iraq.
Only Condi or her Boss could fit that many stupid sentiments in one sentence without causing the Press Corps to explode. Let’s analyze them, quickly.
- Apparently she thinks that Iran and Syria would be stupid enough to request permission from the United States to invade Lebanon or build a nuclear weapon in exchange for cooperation.
- She must have missed the memo that said Iran has never actually expressed the desire to build a Nuclear bomb in the first place. Regardless of what their true intentions are, they’re certainly not going to ask for a bomb before they ask for a better civilian nuclear policy.
- Condi Rice has such low expectations of her own ability to negotiate, she is afraid that if she entered into talks with Tehran, they might end up convincing her that they should be allowed to nuke Israel.
Can it get dumber? I’m afraid so. From the same piece:
Indeed, Rice argued that the Middle East is being rearranged in ways that provide the United States with new opportunities, what she repeatedly called a “new strategic context.”
If Condi calls what’s happening in the middle east a “rearrangement”, I can only imagine what her house looks like after she decides the couch should be on the other side of the living room. Snark aside, this leads to an even more dangerous point about Rice’s style of non-diplomacy: Holding your breath until someone new comes along to negotiate is not any way to run foreign policy. Particularly if the nations you’re hoping for a democratic government to talk to happen to be Iran and Syria. Imagine if the United States had tried that in the Cold War.
Condi Rice has obviously been over her head at State since the day she set foot in Foggy Bottom. It’s time to begin asking for her resignation.
Also on Daily Kos
Resign, Condi!
Condi cannot resign because her husb…the president would be lost without her. They are 2 peas in a pod -she wanted to be a star pianist, but the prospect of all that work was too much for her.
Why bother, just fake it – if you don’t mind cheating there is applause everywhere.
The real problem is that foreign policy is being made by the Pentagon, not the State Department, so that Condi, as bad as she is, does not have much to work with. The Pentagon’s idea of diplomacy is “surrender on our terms.” This is always a very hard sell.
The US has already publicly named both Syria and Iran as enemies. These countries have obviously taken us at our word, and are not about to help us to do them in. Which means they won’t help the us in Iraq either.
So even the fools in the White House can see that if they want to make a deal they will have to make concessions.
The White House is not ready to make concessions. The US plight is not bad enough.
Don’t worry: It will get worse. The powers that be are already preparing to shoot Bush & Co out of the saddle, litterally or figuratively.