Susan Rice is Bad News for Africa
By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | December 3, 2008
Barack Obama’s nominee for United Nations Ambassador is a very aggressive woman – militarily speaking. Susan Rice is “more bellicose” than George Bush when it comes to threatening Sudan over the plight of the people of Darfur, “while simultaneously backing a savage U.S.-Ethiopian assault that causes an even larger humanitarian calamity in Somalia.” One is forced to conclude that “Susan Rice’s brand of ‘humanitarian intervention’ is a farce, a pretext to justify military aggression under the guise of preventing human suffering.”If you believe that Barack Obama will pursue a policy in the Horn of Africa that is substantially different than that of George Bush, you are in for a deep disappointment. Only weeks after Ethiopia’s U.S.-instigated invasion of Somalia almost two years ago, Susan Rice, Obama’s choice for Ambassador to the United Nations, endorsed the aggression – an atrocity that has resulted in the displacement of 1.5 million Somalis and impending starvation of 3.5 million more.
Rice is a proponent of so-called “humanitarian military intervention” – but supports a U.S. Somalia policy that created “Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis,” according to the United Nations.
There is every reason to believe she will counsel the next president to continue George Bush’s policies in the Horn of Africa. In January, 2007, while Ethiopian troops attempted to crush Islamists who had brought a brief period of relative peace and stability to Somalia, and U.S. air and sea forces pounded the countryside with missiles and bombs, Rice revealed herself to be an apostle of George Bush’s War on Somalia (and the so-called War on Terror in general). Rice told the PBS News Hour that U.S. collaboration with the Ethiopian invaders was justified by what she called America’s “counterterrorism imperatives,” which she said “really are real in the context of Somalia.” In Rice’s words, “We have to go after the terrorist cells where we find them.”
The Bush regime gave no estimate of how many persons with ties to Al Qaida were operating on Somali soil, but the number appears to have been very small. The main goal of the Americans and their Ethiopian allies was to crush the government that had been created by Somali Islamists. The Islamic Courts regime, as Abukar Arman writes in the journal Global Politician, operated “schools, hospitals, and for six months before the occupation removed every checkpoint in Mogadishu and brought a semblance of peace.” Two years after the invasion, the Islamists have retaken much of southern and central Somalia, and the Ethiopians appear poised to withdraw – after killing, starving and displacing millions in partnership with the United States.
The “humanitarian” component of Susan Rice’s militarism is quite selective.
She has long been a super-hawk on punishing Sudan for its behavior in Darfur. Back in October, 2006, Rice declared, “It’s time to get tough” with the government in Khartoum.” In a Washington Post column, she advised the Bush regime to give Sudan “an ultimatum: accept unconditional deployment of the U.N. force within one week or face military consequences.”
On Darfur, Rice is more bellicose than Bush. She sees no contradiction in calling for military action against Sudan, supposedly to end a “humanitarian crisis” in Darfur, while simultaneously backing a savage U.S.-Ethiopian assault that causes an even larger humanitarian calamity in Somalia. Rice claims to seek safety for civilians in Darfur, while supporting a total absence of security for Somali civilians. Darfur is a military/political convenience for “real-politic” operatives like Susan Rice. As Bruce Dixon wrote in his November 2007 BAR article, “If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?”
Rice’s behavior in Africa has always been morally inconsistent. She was a member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council during the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi minority. Later, she “swore” she would go “down in flames” if necessary to prevent future genocides. But after her promotion to Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, she failed to publicly advocate action against U.S. allies Uganda and by then Tutsi-ruled Rwanda – the main perpetrators in an ongoing war that his killed millions
Susan Rice’s brand of “humanitarian intervention” is a farce, a pretext to justify military aggression under the guise of preventing human suffering. She has amply demonstrated that her sole concern is projection of U.S. power by any means – or pretext – that is available.
Rice embraces a policy that causes mass death and starvation in Somalia and ongoing genocide in Congo. Although she’s no blood relative of Condoleezza Rice, on African issues she seems headed in the same direction as the current Secretary of State.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
Related articles
Susan Rice is Bad News for Africa
Susan Rice Is Bad News
Her appointment will outrage conservatives — for the wrong
reasons
by Justin Raimondo, November 21, 2012
The largely partisan debate over what really happened in Benghazi has
centered around the public pronouncements of UN Ambassador Susan Rice,
whose comments on the Sunday talk show circuit attributed the death of
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others to a riot precipitated by the
“Innocence of Muslims” video. With indications
the administration may be considering Rice to replace Hillary Clinton at the
State Department, Sen. John McCain has gone on the
warpath, declaring her unfit to hold office and vowing to block her
nomination: the Fox News media machine echoes his ranting (or perhaps I should
say McCain is echoing their
ravings). And so the stage is set for another one of those Red
Team-Blue Team showdowns that underscore the evolution of politics into pure
entertainment, and have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever policy
differences the two sides may have. McCain’s grandstanding is unfortunate, not least of all because it obscures the real reason the Senate should reject the Rice nomination, if and when it is announced: she’s one of the most militant [pdf] of the New Interventionists who infest the Obama administration’s foreign policy shop. With Rice at the helm, the State Department would become an increasingly belligerent mouthpiece for the militant regime-changers who increasingly dominate our foreign policy councils.
Rice was in the vanguard of the Libya operation, and is credited with pressuring a reluctant President to get involved in an adventure he was sure to regret. As the idiotic left-neocon John Avlon enthused in Newsweek/The Daily Beast:
“The Libyan airstrikes mark the first time in U.S. history that a female-dominated diplomatic team has urged military action.
“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the influential Office of Multilateral and Human Rights Director Samantha Power to argue for airstrikes against Libya. Their advice triggered an abrupt shift in U.S. policy, overturning more cautious administrations’ counselors.”
Leave it to the Beasties to frame this in terms of identity politics, but that is precisely the political calculation the Obama administration will be making if Rice is indeed the President’s nominee for State: not only is Rice one of the Three Harpies of War who — in the Madeleine Albright tradition — agitated for the disastrous Libyan intervention, she’s also African-American, a major plus in an administration where identity politics trumps real world qualifications.
As Undersecretary of State for African Affairs during the Clinton administration, Rice traces her induction into the Humanitarian Interventionist Brigade to the alleged genocide in Rwanda that occurred under Clinton’s watch, and credits the administration’s failure to act as her come-to-Jesus moment: “”I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” That it was the US consulate in Benghazi that went down in flames due to the blowback from her policy stance and influence is just one of those little ironies of history no one in Washington wants to talk about.
Mentored by Albright — whose reputation as an interventionist of the “humanitarian” school was secured by her infamous remark that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis due to sanctions was “worth it” — Rice apparently absorbed the Albrightian mindset.
She is an especially fervent advocate of stepping up US intervention in Africa. The dark continent, she avers, is in the midst of its “first world war,” and she knows what side she’s on. As Ethiopia’s late dictator Meles Zenawi slashed and burned his way through Somalia, in 2007, Rice’s was the loudest voice in his cheering section. Zenawi, a Marxist revolutionary who seized power in 1991, was a ruthless tyrant who suppressed the opposition, staged phony elections, and became a compliant instrument of Washington. Washington utilized Zenawi when they took up against the Al-Shabab “terrorist” group in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops launched a full-scale invasion which predictably ended in failure. As US military aid poured in, Zenawi launched a campaign of brutal repression against the Oromo and Anuak minorities, decimating their communities, murdering thousands and jailing as many as 25,000.
In spite of Zenawi’s record, his death elicited loud cries of mourning from his Western patrons, especially from Rice, who delivered an embarrassingly effusive paean at his funeral: the departed dictator was “wise,” she said, as well as a loving family man, and she lauded him as a “friend,” calling him by his first name throughout. A more sickening display of obsequious fawning by a US official over a monster in human form has rarely been recorded.
Like Albright, Rice is an abrasive personality: her rhetorical style, suffused with the smug self-righteousness that characterizes the Clinton State Department, was on full display when she went after Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin for calling for an investigation into civilian deaths suffered by the Libyans at the hands of their NATO liberators: “Oh, the bombast and bogus claims,” she shrieked. “Welcome to December. Is everybody sufficiently distracted from Syria now and the killing that is happening before our very eyes?” She characterized the Russian veto of measures to isolate the Syrian regime as “disgusting.”
Churkin was quick to reply, chiding this American Valkyrie for the cold war-ish tone of her remarks:
“We hear that the Obama administration wants to establish a dialogue with the international community in the United Nations, and in the Security Council. If that is to be the case, really this Stanford dictionary of expletives must be replaced by something more Victorian, because certainly this is not the language in which we intend to discuss matters with our partners in the Security Council.”
Rice is a Stanford University alumnus, where she graduated, in 1986, with a B. A. in history. She was the recipient of a Truman Scholarship, i.e. a government subsidy, awarded by a federally-supported “foundation” to favored applicants in the field of international studies. Chairperson of the board: Madeleine Albright, who describes the program as “identifying future change agents.”
The “change” she will bring — and has already brought — to the course of US foreign policy means a qualitative ramping up of the “regime change” campaign begun by the Bush administration and escalated by Obama. The theory of the “responsibility to protect” will rationalize the stepped up tempo of US intervention in the Middle East and Africa , at least to the satisfaction of the liberal elites who will cheer her appointment and revel in her rudeness (especially when it comes to insulting the Russians). And it won’t just be Ambassador Churkin who will cringe at her histrionics once she’s ensconced in Foggy Bottom.
While more cautious when it comes to Syria, she’ll no doubt be in the forefront of the administration’s efforts to shape a Syrian opposition group less upfront in its fealty to al-Qaeda. More ominously, she’ll be aggressive when it comes to confronting Iran.
Rice has been the White House’s point-person in its efforts to sound tough on Tehran, and she is firmly in the back pocket of the Israel lobby — a “no daylighter” to the max.
President Obama has been backed into a corner by McCain, and if he doesn’t choose Rice it will be counted as a scalp on Mad John’s belt. Add to this the domestic political advantages of elevating a photogenic African-American female with ties to the Clinton faction of the Democratic party, and you have all the elements of a politically savvy and quite obvious choice. As us libertarian realists like to say: foreign policy is all about domestic politics, and the Rice nomination will mobilize the disparate elements of the Obamaite coalition in a high profile high stakes fight.
Liberals who consider themselves peaceniks will rally around her not least due to the Benghazi bungle and McCain’s vendetta, while conservatives will hate her for entirely the wrong reasons. This is at it should be — in Bizarro World.
Bemoaning McCain’s hegemony in the Republican foreign policy field, and mocking his refusal to consider any appointment unless his (rather vague) demands are met, Rachel Maddow launched into one of her fascinating foreign policy speeches the other night. She showed a hilarious video montage of McCain calling for arming various “rebel” groups, from Bosnia to Syria, and asked: can’t the GOP do better than the Arizona militarist when it comes to finding a foreign policy spokesman?
I wonder what Maddow and her fans will say when Secretary Rice announces we’re arming the rebels in Syria — and in whatever African hellhole is on the verge of a sudden “humanitarian crisis”?
Susan Rice is bad news for opponents of our global meddling, bad news for the peace movement, and bad news for the country. Too bad we have to depend on McCain to torpedo her nomination: this means she will almost certainly be confirmed, as Mad John is widely seen as pursuing a personal feud and is increasingly isolated on the Hill. Even the always dependable Joe Lieberman — who is retiring — has abandoned him on this matter. That leaves Lindsey Graham as the sole remaining member of the Three Amigos of the War Party. The joke is that McCain and Rice disagree on nothing of substance.
If and when Rice is confirmed, it will mark the beginning of a new era of “humanitarian” intervention-on-steroids. Enlisted service members can look forward to frequent deployments to the jungles of Africa, while the “liberal” punditocracy on the home front can anticipate silencing critics with bombastic and bogus claims of “racism.” Chris Matthews will have a ball.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
Our fundraising has picked up a bit — and I attribute this to an urgent appeal I sent out over Twitter. I have to say I’m really enjoying Twitter: it’s a great way to get the news as it’s breaking and communicate directly with my readers — as well as my adversaries. You can follow me on Twitter here.
I said our fundraising has picked up a bit, but “a bit” isn’t going to get us very far. This winter appeal is a very rough row to hoe, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you we’re standing at the edge of a very tall cliff, staring down into the abyss. In all my fifteen years or so of going through this routine I can honestly say it’s never been this hard to raise the relative pittance we need to survive.
The difficulty of fundraising on behalf of a nonprofit like Antiwar.com has been getting progressively worse of late. In hard times, charitable donations drop precipitously — and I remember, back a year or so before the crash of ’08, we really began to feel it. That’s why we need your help more than ever just to keep this operation afloat. Because what we do is genuinely important, and not least of all because we do it in a way that is unique in the history of the antiwar movement.
Bringing together all elements of a broad left-right coalition, our goal is to effect a fundamental change in US foreign policy — not the kind of “change” that might win one a Truman Scholarship, to be sure. Washington’s interventionist foreign policy is endangering American citizens, and acting against our interests, as well as driving us into bankruptcy. It cannot continue: it must not continue. Help us win the battle of ideas and mobilize public opinion in the cause of peace — make your tax-deductible donation today.
Susan Rice a bad news for the U.S., Africa and the world
by Conformist
» 21 Nov 2012, 11:22
By Justin Raimondo
The largely partisan debate over what really happened in Benghazi has centered around the public pronouncements of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, whose comments on the Sunday talk show circuit attributed the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others to a riot precipitated by the “Innocence of Muslims” video. With indications the administration may be considering Rice to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department, Sen. John McCain has gone on the warpath, declaring her unfit to hold office and vowing to block her nomination: the Fox News media machine echoes his ranting (or perhaps I should say McCain is echoing their ravings). And so the stage is set for another one of those Red Team-Blue Team showdowns that underscore the evolution of politics into pure entertainment, and have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever policy differences the two sides may have.
McCain’s grandstanding is unfortunate, not least of all because it obscures the real reason the Senate should reject the Rice nomination, if and when it is announced: she’s one of the most militant of the New Interventionists who infest the Obama administration’s foreign policy shop. With Rice at the helm, the State Department would become an increasingly belligerent mouthpiece for the militant regime-changers who increasingly dominate our foreign policy councils.
Rice was in the vanguard of the Libya operation, and is credited with pressuring a reluctant President to get involved in an adventure he was sure to regret. As the idiotic left-neocon John Avlon enthused in Newsweek/The Daily Beast:
“The Libyan airstrikes mark the first time in U.S. history that a female-dominated diplomatic team has urged military action.
“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the influential Office of Multilateral and Human Rights Director Samantha Power to argue for airstrikes against Libya. Their advice triggered an abrupt shift in U.S. policy, overturning more cautious administrations’ counselors.”
Leave it to the Beasties to frame this in terms of identity politics, but that is precisely the political calculation the Obama administration will be making if Rice is indeed the President’s nominee for State: not only is Rice one of the Three Harpies of War who — in the Madeleine Albright tradition — agitated for the disastrous Libyan intervention, she’s also African-American, a major plus in an administration where identity politics trumps real world qualifications.
As Undersecretary of State for African Affairs during the Clinton administration, Rice traces her induction into the Humanitarian Interventionist Brigade to the alleged genocide in Rwanda that occurred under Clinton’s watch, and credits the administration’s failure to act as her come-to-Jesus moment: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." That it was the US consulate in Benghazi that went down in flames due to the blowback from her policy stance and influence is just one of those little ironies of history no one in Washington wants to talk about.
Mentored by Albright — whose reputation as an interventionist of the “humanitarian” school was secured by her infamous remark that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis due to sanctions was “worth it” — Rice apparently absorbed the Albrightian mindset.
She is an especially a fervent advocate of stepping up US intervention in Africa. The dark continent, she avers, is in the midst of its “first world war,” and she knows what side she’s on. As Ethiopia’s late dictator Meles Zenawi slashed and burned his way through Somalia, in 2007, Rice’s was the loudest voice in his cheering section. Zenawi, a Marxist revolutionary who seized power in 1991, was a ruthless tyrant who suppressed the opposition, staged phony elections, and became a compliant instrument of Washington. Washington utilized Zenawi when they took up against the Al-Shabab “terrorist” group in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops launched a full-scale invasion which predictably ended in failure. As US military aid poured in, Zenawi launched a campaign of brutal repression against the Oromo and Anuak minorities, decimating their communities, murdering thousands and jailing as many as 25,000.
In spite of Zenawi’s record, his death elicited loud cries of mourning from his Western patrons, especially from Rice, who delivered an embarrassingly effusive paean at his funeral: the departed dictator was “wise,” she said, as well as a loving family man, and she lauded him as a “friend,” calling him by his first name throughout. A more sickening display of obsequious fawning by a US official over a monster in human form has rarely been recorded.
Like Albright, Rice is an abrasive personality: her rhetorical style, suffused with the smug self-righteousness that characterizes the Clinton State Department, was on full display when she went after Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin for calling for an investigation into civilian deaths suffered by the Libyans at the hands of their NATO liberators: “Oh, the bombast and bogus claims,” she shrieked. “Welcome to December. Is everybody sufficiently distracted from Syria now and the killing that is happening before our very eyes?” She characterized the Russian veto of measures to isolate the Syrian regime as “disgusting.”
Churkin was quick to reply, chiding this American Valkyrie for the cold war-ish tone of her remarks:
“We hear that the Obama administration wants to establish a dialogue with the international community in the United Nations, and in the Security Council. If that is to be the case, really this Stanford dictionary of expletives must be replaced by something more Victorian, because certainly this is not the language in which we intend to discuss matters with our partners in the Security Council.”
Rice is a Stanford University alumnus, where she graduated, in 1986, with a B. A. in history. She was the recipient of a Truman Scholarship, i.e. a government subsidy, awarded by a federally-supported “foundation” to favored applicants in the field of international studies. Chairperson of the board: Madeleine Albright, who describes the program as “identifying future change agents.”
The “change” she will bring — and has already brought — to the course of US foreign policy means a qualitative ramping up of the “regime change” campaign begun by the Bush administration and escalated by Obama. The theory of the “responsibility to protect” will rationalize the stepped up tempo of US intervention in the Middle East and Africa, at least to the satisfaction of the liberal elites who will cheer her appointment and revel in her rudeness (especially when it comes to insulting the Russians). And it won’t just be Ambassador Churkin who will cringe at her histrionics once she’s ensconced in Foggy Bottom. [...]
Susan Rice is bad news for opponents of our global meddling, bad news for the peace movement, and bad news for the country. Too bad we have to depend on McCain to torpedo her nomination: this means she will almost certainly be confirmed, as Mad John is widely seen as pursuing a personal feud and is increasingly isolated on the Hill. Even the always dependable Joe Lieberman — who is retiring — has abandoned him on this matter. That leaves Lindsey Graham as the sole remaining member of the Three Amigos of the War Party. The joke is that McCain and Rice disagree on nothing of substance.
If and when Rice is confirmed, it will mark the beginning of a new era of “humanitarian” intervention-on-steroids. Enlisted service members can look forward to frequent deployments to the jungles of Africa, while the “liberal” punditocracy on the home front can anticipate silencing critics with bombastic and bogus claims of “racism.” Chris Matthews will have a ball.
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012 ... -bad-news/
The largely partisan debate over what really happened in Benghazi has centered around the public pronouncements of UN Ambassador Susan Rice, whose comments on the Sunday talk show circuit attributed the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others to a riot precipitated by the “Innocence of Muslims” video. With indications the administration may be considering Rice to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department, Sen. John McCain has gone on the warpath, declaring her unfit to hold office and vowing to block her nomination: the Fox News media machine echoes his ranting (or perhaps I should say McCain is echoing their ravings). And so the stage is set for another one of those Red Team-Blue Team showdowns that underscore the evolution of politics into pure entertainment, and have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever policy differences the two sides may have.
McCain’s grandstanding is unfortunate, not least of all because it obscures the real reason the Senate should reject the Rice nomination, if and when it is announced: she’s one of the most militant of the New Interventionists who infest the Obama administration’s foreign policy shop. With Rice at the helm, the State Department would become an increasingly belligerent mouthpiece for the militant regime-changers who increasingly dominate our foreign policy councils.
Rice was in the vanguard of the Libya operation, and is credited with pressuring a reluctant President to get involved in an adventure he was sure to regret. As the idiotic left-neocon John Avlon enthused in Newsweek/The Daily Beast:
“The Libyan airstrikes mark the first time in U.S. history that a female-dominated diplomatic team has urged military action.
“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and the influential Office of Multilateral and Human Rights Director Samantha Power to argue for airstrikes against Libya. Their advice triggered an abrupt shift in U.S. policy, overturning more cautious administrations’ counselors.”
Leave it to the Beasties to frame this in terms of identity politics, but that is precisely the political calculation the Obama administration will be making if Rice is indeed the President’s nominee for State: not only is Rice one of the Three Harpies of War who — in the Madeleine Albright tradition — agitated for the disastrous Libyan intervention, she’s also African-American, a major plus in an administration where identity politics trumps real world qualifications.
As Undersecretary of State for African Affairs during the Clinton administration, Rice traces her induction into the Humanitarian Interventionist Brigade to the alleged genocide in Rwanda that occurred under Clinton’s watch, and credits the administration’s failure to act as her come-to-Jesus moment: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." That it was the US consulate in Benghazi that went down in flames due to the blowback from her policy stance and influence is just one of those little ironies of history no one in Washington wants to talk about.
Mentored by Albright — whose reputation as an interventionist of the “humanitarian” school was secured by her infamous remark that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis due to sanctions was “worth it” — Rice apparently absorbed the Albrightian mindset.
She is an especially a fervent advocate of stepping up US intervention in Africa. The dark continent, she avers, is in the midst of its “first world war,” and she knows what side she’s on. As Ethiopia’s late dictator Meles Zenawi slashed and burned his way through Somalia, in 2007, Rice’s was the loudest voice in his cheering section. Zenawi, a Marxist revolutionary who seized power in 1991, was a ruthless tyrant who suppressed the opposition, staged phony elections, and became a compliant instrument of Washington. Washington utilized Zenawi when they took up against the Al-Shabab “terrorist” group in Somalia, where Ethiopian troops launched a full-scale invasion which predictably ended in failure. As US military aid poured in, Zenawi launched a campaign of brutal repression against the Oromo and Anuak minorities, decimating their communities, murdering thousands and jailing as many as 25,000.
In spite of Zenawi’s record, his death elicited loud cries of mourning from his Western patrons, especially from Rice, who delivered an embarrassingly effusive paean at his funeral: the departed dictator was “wise,” she said, as well as a loving family man, and she lauded him as a “friend,” calling him by his first name throughout. A more sickening display of obsequious fawning by a US official over a monster in human form has rarely been recorded.
Like Albright, Rice is an abrasive personality: her rhetorical style, suffused with the smug self-righteousness that characterizes the Clinton State Department, was on full display when she went after Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin for calling for an investigation into civilian deaths suffered by the Libyans at the hands of their NATO liberators: “Oh, the bombast and bogus claims,” she shrieked. “Welcome to December. Is everybody sufficiently distracted from Syria now and the killing that is happening before our very eyes?” She characterized the Russian veto of measures to isolate the Syrian regime as “disgusting.”
Churkin was quick to reply, chiding this American Valkyrie for the cold war-ish tone of her remarks:
“We hear that the Obama administration wants to establish a dialogue with the international community in the United Nations, and in the Security Council. If that is to be the case, really this Stanford dictionary of expletives must be replaced by something more Victorian, because certainly this is not the language in which we intend to discuss matters with our partners in the Security Council.”
Rice is a Stanford University alumnus, where she graduated, in 1986, with a B. A. in history. She was the recipient of a Truman Scholarship, i.e. a government subsidy, awarded by a federally-supported “foundation” to favored applicants in the field of international studies. Chairperson of the board: Madeleine Albright, who describes the program as “identifying future change agents.”
The “change” she will bring — and has already brought — to the course of US foreign policy means a qualitative ramping up of the “regime change” campaign begun by the Bush administration and escalated by Obama. The theory of the “responsibility to protect” will rationalize the stepped up tempo of US intervention in the Middle East and Africa, at least to the satisfaction of the liberal elites who will cheer her appointment and revel in her rudeness (especially when it comes to insulting the Russians). And it won’t just be Ambassador Churkin who will cringe at her histrionics once she’s ensconced in Foggy Bottom. [...]
Susan Rice is bad news for opponents of our global meddling, bad news for the peace movement, and bad news for the country. Too bad we have to depend on McCain to torpedo her nomination: this means she will almost certainly be confirmed, as Mad John is widely seen as pursuing a personal feud and is increasingly isolated on the Hill. Even the always dependable Joe Lieberman — who is retiring — has abandoned him on this matter. That leaves Lindsey Graham as the sole remaining member of the Three Amigos of the War Party. The joke is that McCain and Rice disagree on nothing of substance.
If and when Rice is confirmed, it will mark the beginning of a new era of “humanitarian” intervention-on-steroids. Enlisted service members can look forward to frequent deployments to the jungles of Africa, while the “liberal” punditocracy on the home front can anticipate silencing critics with bombastic and bogus claims of “racism.” Chris Matthews will have a ball.
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012 ... -bad-news/
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