Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: The other shoe must drop
By John Hooper
The Sentinel (Kennesaw State U.)
12/27/2006

(U-WIRE) KENNESAW, Ga. — With the swift post-election sacking of Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush has accomplished only half of the housecleaning that's needed to overcome the mess we have created in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the former National Security Advisor during the president's first term, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contributed to the Bush administration's shift from focusing on the War on Terror and the hunt for Osama bin Laden to Iraq.

In a pre-class discussion of the election returns last week, I said that "as the National Security Advisor, Rice was a good ice-skater, and as Secretary of State, she is a very good pianist." While some of the students who follow politics smiled, a small group took exception to the comment. It seems that there are some who consider Secretary Rice to be an ideal presidential candidate in 2008 or 2012.

Why would I make such a statement about a person some have called the most powerful woman in the world? Because she screwed up royally as head of the National Security Council. She is not doing very well in her current position at the State Department, either. The sad part of all this is that "Condi" is a very intelligent and talented woman, with a fantastic record of accomplishment-prior to serving President Bush. She grew up in Birmingham, the daughter of a teacher/mother and a school administrator/minister father. She took piano lessons from her grandmother and was a serious figure-skating talent. Rice graduated from high-school at 15, and from college, cum laude, at 19. After winning a piano competition, she played a concerto with the Denver Symphony. She then switched from music to political science and pursued her PhD.

Rice became a professor at Stanford, and then the youngest provost in that school's history. As provost, she reformed Stanford's financial system, turning an annual deficit into a surplus that attracted more benefactors, all while teaching and publishing three books. Her specialty is the politics of the USSR and the Cold War, which gave her the opportunity to work for the government, including serving on the National Security Council for the first President Bush.

Rice was raised as a Democrat and she worked in the Carter administration as an intern. Her dissatisfaction with Carter's wishy-washy policies resulted in her becoming a Republican, and working in several positions for Republicans since the Reagan presidency. Through her government and Republican connections, she became a member of the board of directors of several major corporations, including California-based Chevron, which named one of its tankers for her. When the current president was running for office, he needed someone to coach him on foreign policy matters. His father recommended Rice. She left her position at Stanford and joined the W campaign team, being rewarded with the Security Advisor position when W was elected.

The National Security Advisor position and the NSC staff were created to help the president sort through and evaluate all of the recommendations and advice from various departments and agencies, and then help the president develop a coherent foreign affairs strategy. Her role was to balance the information from the CIA and the Departments of Defense, State and Treasury, along with other available data, and recommend a prudent course of action.

In this, she failed. Abandoning the concept of containment that had worked so well in dealing with the USSR and Eastern Europe, her areas of expertise, she stridently recommended a policy of preemption, the need to strike first at any potential enemies when we believe they pose a credible threat.

Rice also forcefully argued that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, choosing to ignore the reservations of experienced CIA analysts who said that there was no longer any evidence that Iraq had any WMD. Rather than being an honest broker of information, she became a partisan spokesperson for those advocating war against Iraq and the deposing of Saddam Hussein. She wrote articles, gave speeches and television interviews, arguing for war in Iraq. Former CIA Director George Tenet testified that he personally warned Rice about credible evidence of planned terror attacks two months before 9/11. Rice says that she does not remember the discussion, even though the warning was recorded in the president's daily intelligence briefing. The PDB had specifically mentioned possible attacks using airliners. The bottom line is that she was wrong and that she failed to do her job. She chose instead to side with the group in the Defense Department, along with the vice president, who wanted to topple Saddam Hussein.

Her performance as head of the State Department is also less than stellar. Rice has attempted to mend relations with our allies, but Europeans are backing further away from support of U.S. policy in Iraq. Despite Republican complaints that President Clinton acted too late to prevent a massacre in Rwanda in the 1990s, she has not persuaded our government or the U.N. to stop the acknowledged genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Rice failed to urge restraint by the Israelis this summer in their disastrous invasion into Lebanon. Rather than calming relations with potential adversaries, we watch as Iran and North Korea continue to develop nuclear weapons while thumbing their noses at us. Again, she is failing to do the job we expect of a Secretary of State, as respect for our country and our ideals plummets around the world.

Mr. President, it is time to ask for the resignation of your marvelously talented, but seriously under-performing, Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

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