Former aide, public policy scholar agree: Rice doesn't have a clue about ME history

[ProSense]

January 19, 2007

Rice aide says she lacks ‘vaguest notion’ of modern Middle Eastern history

Posted 1:10 pm | Printer Friendly | Spotlight

Snip…

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is especially fond of pointing to history to justify White House decisions. When pressed a few months ago about the failures of the administration’s policies in the Middle East, Rice told reporters, “I’m a student of history, so perhaps I have a little more patience with enormous change in the international system. It’s a big shifting of tectonic plates, and I don’t expect it to happen in a few days or even in a year.” Apparently, Rice’s detractors just don’t know enough about history to make sound judgments. We should leave it all to Dr. Rice.

With this in mind, the Wall Street Journal noted today that when Rice compares today’s challenges in the Middle East to the Cold War and post-World War II Europe, as she does quite frequently, she has no idea what she’s talking about.

Her contention is while things may look bad now in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, history is on the administration’s side. She pushed a similar argument to reporters last month. The Middle East is “moving toward something that I am quite certain will not have a full resolution and that you will not be able to fully judge for decades,” she said.

Critics dismiss Ms. Rice’s references to the Cold War as both convenient and a sign of her limited frame of reference. The challenges facing Europe in 1946, they say, bear little similarity to those of the Middle East in the 21st century.

“The administration’s reservoir of historical analogies seems limited to the 1914-1991 period. And it’s all about Europe,” said Adam Garfinkle, a former Rice speechwriter who edits the foreign-policy journal The American Interest. “No one in a senior position in this administration seems to have even the vaguest notion of modern Middle Eastern history.”

When a Rice speechwriter says the administration’s top officials are clueless, you know it’s bad.

Snip…

Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former advisor to Secretaries of State from George Schulz to Colin Powell, said Rice’s comments were so misguided, he “nearly fell off (his) chair” when he read them.
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[Elidor]

1. Add it to the list of things she's clueless about

Such as diplomacy and National Security.

[bdamomma]

2. Aren't they clueless about the ME, the only thing they know is

OIL.

[jwirr]

3. This whole administration is clueless about anything short of

getting rich. The real problem with them is not that they do not know, it is that they do not want to know.

[wake.up.america]

4. She is clueless about what it means to have character.