dear condoleezza rice

[piranha]

how anyone can be so smart and yet so abysmally stupid at the same time, it boggles my mind. do you not realize that what you say is listened to by the arab world with the perkiest of ears? do you not realize what images are plastered all over their newsmedia? let me help you out: the images of severely injured or dead children.

"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

you shrubwad, you. piss, piss, piss. pissing it all away, every little bit of gain other people give their lives to make.

[edit: ah, i see abu aardvark has an actual useful analysis about this, rather than an eye-rolling rantlet.]

Comments

[necturus.livejournal.com]

The Bush clique clearly wants war in the Middle East; Lord knows why, although if they were seriously intent on wrecking the United States as a world power, just about everything they've done to date would make perfect sense to me.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Before 9/11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization in the world. I think that may have something to do with the Bush administration's willingness to let Israel go nuts for another week or two.

[(Anonymous)]

If so, their myopia will see us all on the ash heap of history.

Israel is attacking more than just Hezbollah; they've destroyed hundreds of thousands of Lebanese homes and killed more civilians than guerrillas.

Secondly, Hezbollah is neither a short-term nor a long-term threat to the security of the United States, whatever it may have done in the past notwithstanding. Its aims are strictly local, and it's a Shiite group; it wants no part of Osama bin Laden's dream of a world caliphate -- indeed, such a thing would be Hezbollah's worst nightmare. One has only to look at the history of Shiites under the Sunni caliphates -- particularly the Umayyad one -- to understand that.

The United States hass no proper business getting involved in Middle Eastern conflicts. There's no longer a Soviet Union poised to seize the oilfields, and when the dust settles whoever controls them will still want our business.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

By all accounts she was a really superb concert pianist. I don't know what put her off pursuing a career in that and moving into diplomacy instead. Even then, she's been pretty good as long as she's been out of the spotlight. But she doesn't have the dignitas of a good public figure, and at times like this it really shows.

Not that Madeline Allbright was any better...

I'm hoping that Angela Merkel will continue to develop as a first class diplomat. Maybe she'll exert a good influence on Dr. Rice. Ever since women have come into positions of influence on the world stage we've had too many who chose the Iron Bitch model of Margaret Thatcher. To Rice's credit, she has not been following that model. Nor has she styled herself after her boss, GWB. She seems to want to be sui generis, and I think that's good, but she really needs to work on what the Jesuits call "contemplation in action," to avoid gaffes like the one you quote.