Condi Rice: Back to the Future

You know we've hit the fever pitch of Bush administration legacy salvaging when Condoleezza Rice has a piece in Foreign Affairs. Rice takes the Marty McFly approach, looking back to her original assessment during the 2000 presidential Campaign, Rice surveys 8 years of Bush administration policy - policy which she played a principal role in formulating - and big surprise, she has a lot of trouble putting their record in favorable terms. Ultimately, however, it doesn't matter whether its 2000 or 2008, if you try to square Rice's analysis with the state of the world today, you end up with a catalog of faulty recommendations and squandered opportunities.

In 2000, Rice articulated the Bush administration's guiding principle for dealing with our allies:

"to renew strong and intimate relationships with allies who share American values and can thus share the burden of promoting peace, prosperity, and freedom;"

Here she is in 2008, looking fondly back:

"I believe that one of the most compelling stories of our time is our relationship with our oldest allies."

And

"If someone had said in 2000 that NATO today would be rooting out terrorists in Kandahar, training the security forces of a free Iraq, providing critical support to peacekeepers in Darfur, and moving forward on missile defenses, hopefully in partnership with Russia, who would have believed him?"

Sadly, as far as our relationships go, the Bush administration's record under Rice's tutelage has been abysmal. In Europe, opinion of the U.S. has never been lower, and administration officials and their minions have been happy to pour salt on the wounds. On the subject of NATO, the administration's lapses in Afghanistan and the consigning of the mission to "do what we can" status have given rise to perceptions that the historic alliance is "divided" or "unwieldy." Those aren't results we can believe in.

But let's not stop there. Rice's understanding of the military is just as alarming. It's not a surprise that Cheney and Rumsfeld bulldozed Rice when she was National Security adviser, because she doesn't have the foggiest idea what she's talking about. Take a look:

"Thus the next president should refocus the Pentagon's priorities on building the military of the 21st century rather than continuing to build on the structure of the Cold War...In order to do this, Washington must reallocate resources, perhaps in some cases skipping a generation of technology to make leaps rather than incremental improvements in its forces. "

Sound familiar? That's because she's echoing Don Rumsfeld's plan on military restructuring, a plan so addle-minded that even Fred Kagan thought it was nuts. Faced with U.S. forces that have stretched themselves beyond comprehension for horrendously bad Bush administration policies, this is the best Rice can offer up:

"The experience of recent years has tested our armed forces, but it has also prepared a new generation of military leaders..."

Huh? That's interesting because, in the case of the Army, future leaders are leaving the service in record numbers. Again, Rice suffers from a bit of a reality problem.

However, there is one area where Rice's analysis holds up, where her words still have relevance for how the U.S. relates to the world, and more specifically, Iraq. In 2000, Rice wrote (my emphasis added):

"Military force is best used to support clear political goals, whether limited, such as expelling Saddam from Kuwait, or comprehensive, such as demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan and Germany during World War II. It is one thing to have a limited political goal and to fight decisively for it; it is quite another to apply military force incrementally, hoping to find a political solution somewhere along the way. A president entering these situations must ask whether decisive force is possible and is likely to be effective and must know how and when to get out."

I couldn't agree more.

Comments

[realpolitic]

Rice is the strangest piece of the puzzle of this inept administratin. With her intelligence she should have been able to give Bush better guidance somewhere along the line. Instead she fell into the same ideological trap of the rest of the Bushies, thinking almost every country would want America to come in and destroy it for the sake of democracy. I do not understand her at all. She has constantly seen her role as being to support and protect the president, rather than give him independent advice. Many said she was the worst National Security Adviser ever. I believe them

[peterg76]

Rice is an expert on the Soviet Union. What little she does know is obsolete by two decades. She was appointed to sabotage diplomacy, not engage in it.

[MilwaukeeDan]

peter, "she was appointed to sabotage diplomacy", thanks, that is the term I have been looking for for years. I have relatives in eastern Europe and work with several Czech companies so I follow what is going on in Russia and Europe. Ms. Rice and this administration have done their best to keep the cold war going. While we try to bankrupt ourselves and Europe by pushing that antique NATO eastward, the Russians are doing business and getting filthy rich, they have no national debt! Condi Rice, Soviet expert, my ass.

[realpolitic]

Yes, her and John Bolton both.

[RoloTomassi]

Rice is an absolute disgrace, and I cannot imagine that AA women in her home state [which is my home state as well] hold her in anything but contempt.

Hopefully Obama will be a far better role model for the AA community, as Rice is an utter failure. As an Alabama native, I see her as a shameful representative.

[noneIn2008]

Odd you make any distinction on her race? What does that have to do with anything?

[CalGoldenBear]

Several years ago, US News & World Reports' "Washington Whispers" had a blurb on Rice wanting to be president, but not wanting to have to run for the office. (By then, she was SecState and making a mess at Foggy Bottom with its personnel and practices -- passport issuance, to name just one area).

She's probably delusional, hoping that she might somehow get picked as John McCain's VP because she's black AND a woman, a "twofer.".

McCain might be "confused," but surely he's rational enough to realize that given the unpopularity of the Iraq war and his own support for it, adding the female cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq is a non-starter.

She should stick to playing the piano and shopping for shoes, especially in times of crisis.

And since "who could imagine?" using planes as weapons (aside from WWII Japanese kamikazes) as on 9/11, maybe she should read Tom Clancy's 1994 "Debt of Honor" in which the book ended with a renegade JAL pilot crashing a 747 into a joint session of Congress. That's how Clancy's fictional Jack Ryan became POTUS.

And that Bin Laden intel memo briefed to The Shrub just before 9/11? The Japanese messages decoded by the U.S. before 12/7/41 didn't specify where, how, and when they would attack either.

She's an ambitious, stupid idiot, Exhibit A twice-over of the Peter Principle of rising to the level of your incompetence.