From Haaretz today, but you can just about pick any day when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks on Iraq and the Middle East to hear her pseudo-intellectual posturing and sullying of the profession of history that most of the world ridicules whenever she prattles on in service to George W. Bush:
As Haaretz' Shmuel Rosner writes, quoting Rice:
"History will judge, but I know enough to know- myself as a historian - that today's headlines are rarely the same as history's judgment, and I think that's going to be the case here as well," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview earlier this week.
Rice was referring to the policies of U.S. President George W. Bush, which she still believes will be seen as more successful in retrospect than they are being seen now.
In April 2006 in England, Rice offered up:
“I know we’ve made tactical errors, thousands of them, I’m sure. But when you look back in history what will be judged will be, did you make the right strategic decisions (in Iraq).”
Rice is a historian, you see, and from her towering heights can see the invasion of Iraq as an epistemological riddle that can only be solved in the long-term future, rendering mere American citizens holding the administration accountable today a short-sighted, pedestrian exercise.
Here's one from last month on the Palestinians and Bush's Herculean efforts to pursue democracy over there, "It's hard for democracy to take hold in a place in which it has not taken hold before but I am confident about the triumph of these values because I have seen it happen before. And I am exceedingly aware that it's a rare circumstance in which today's headlines are consistent with history's judgment," Rice said. (Reuters, June 25, 2007)
She's a historian, she knows and can see what we cannot, even over the many bodies piling up.
Wonder what real historians think of Rice.
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I can't pretend to be real, but I am as much a historian as Rice. She will be judged more harshly by future historians than present day accounts would lead you to believe. Like her patron, she has been a failure at every job she has ever held. She missed the collapse of the Soviet Union as head of the Soviet desk for the NSC. (In addition to referring to herself as a historian, she also describes herself as a "Russia specialist".)
ReplyDeleteShe missed the Pakistani nuclear bomb while at the NSC Asia desk. She missed the Al Qaeda attack on the WTC (no one could have imagined) while she was the National Security Advisor. She was wrong about the WMD as National Security Advisor. She missed the Palestinian election after being told by Egypt, Israel and the Palestinians that Hamas would win. (we didn't have our fingers on the pulse of the Palestinians.) She is the midwife to the "birthpangs of democracy" that became the Israel/Lebanon war. She even allowed millions of dollars to flow from Chevron to Saddam in exchange for oil while she was Director of Policy for Chevron. I wonder what they thought of her at Stanford. History is going to be unkind. I wish her a long life.
I can tell you what *this* Stanford alum thinks - if they allow her back in *any* capacity (and that includes the Hoover Institute) they're getting zippo from me for the rest of my life and beyond. But, at least I can rest easier than Yale and Harvard alums who share their degrees with The Shrub. She was only an employee at Stanford.
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