Rambling with Rice
Secretary of State Rice is overseas this week on a mission to the Middle East. While she has a dashing persona and celebrity cachet, those laudable quaalities have not yet helped her score high on the coherence scale. As she told reporters, she hopes to rally "moderate elements" in the Arab world to the ongoing crusade, er, campaign against Islamist extremists, or Islamofascists, as the President likes to say. Additionally, she wants to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. An ambitious program, to be sure. So how is she doing?
In Saudi Arabia, she called upon the Saudis and the Egyptians, two nations she deems "moderate" in their approach to Islam, to help eradicate Islamic radicals in the region. I guess she forgot that these two nations are among the most repressive in the world, which at least partlly accounts for the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers hail from either Saudi or Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, a forerunner of Al-Quaeda, was born in the torture chambers of the Egyptian government a few decades ago. Saudi Arabia turns a blind eye to the authors of its own textbooks, which openly preach hatred of "Jews and infidels." How she decided these are moderate governments, and how they can "help" eradicate Islamic extremism...well, these things are a great mystery.
In Palestine, she visited the West Bank, trying to bolster the beseiged Palestinian Authority President Abbas. The only trouble is, he has virtually no power since Hamas is the democratically elected governing entity there, and the US doesn't talk to Hamas since they are on the terror blacklist. I wonder how she will get any cooperation from Palestinians in view of the fact that she insisted they have elections, then embargoed them when they made the "wrong" choice and elected Hamas. And can you talk peace if you talk over and around the elected government? If you can, I'd like to know how.
Then today, she dropped in on the Green Zone denizens in Iraq, where she lectured Iraqi legislators about the necessity for getting it together, stopping the bickering, rooting out those death squads in the police force. Didn't they know time is a wasting?
The latter encounter qualifies as "rich," as in "with irony." She helped launch the destruction of the basis for Iraqi national unity, then reads the new government the riot act for failing to Humpty Dumpty together again. The earlier legs of this odyssey are just disconnected, nonsensical, strange.
That's a good verdict, right there. Rich and strange, like the man said in the Tempest.
In Saudi Arabia, she called upon the Saudis and the Egyptians, two nations she deems "moderate" in their approach to Islam, to help eradicate Islamic radicals in the region. I guess she forgot that these two nations are among the most repressive in the world, which at least partlly accounts for the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers hail from either Saudi or Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, a forerunner of Al-Quaeda, was born in the torture chambers of the Egyptian government a few decades ago. Saudi Arabia turns a blind eye to the authors of its own textbooks, which openly preach hatred of "Jews and infidels." How she decided these are moderate governments, and how they can "help" eradicate Islamic extremism...well, these things are a great mystery.
In Palestine, she visited the West Bank, trying to bolster the beseiged Palestinian Authority President Abbas. The only trouble is, he has virtually no power since Hamas is the democratically elected governing entity there, and the US doesn't talk to Hamas since they are on the terror blacklist. I wonder how she will get any cooperation from Palestinians in view of the fact that she insisted they have elections, then embargoed them when they made the "wrong" choice and elected Hamas. And can you talk peace if you talk over and around the elected government? If you can, I'd like to know how.
Then today, she dropped in on the Green Zone denizens in Iraq, where she lectured Iraqi legislators about the necessity for getting it together, stopping the bickering, rooting out those death squads in the police force. Didn't they know time is a wasting?
The latter encounter qualifies as "rich," as in "with irony." She helped launch the destruction of the basis for Iraqi national unity, then reads the new government the riot act for failing to Humpty Dumpty together again. The earlier legs of this odyssey are just disconnected, nonsensical, strange.
That's a good verdict, right there. Rich and strange, like the man said in the Tempest.
posted by buckarooskidoo at 10:51 PM
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