An Adult in the Room

For John, BLUF:  When I knew Dr Condoleezza Rice she was an Intern on the Joint Staff and someone with solid ideas and an ability to communicate.  She moved on to be the National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The New Axis of Evil: Condoleezza Rice on War in Israel and a Changed World

Here is the sub-headline:

The former secretary of state says an attack on Israel is an attack on America.

From The Free Press, by Interviewer Bari Weiss, 13 October 2023.

Here is Secretary Rices response to one of Reporter Bari Weiss' questions:

If you really think the world is better off with Saddam Hussein murdering a million people and putting them in mass graves, be my guest.  If you really think it was a better Afghanistan when women were beaten in stadiums, given to the Taliban by the UN, when girls and women couldn’t go to school, well be my guest.  The United States is not a perfect power.  There’s no such thing.  But I would argue that on balance, the United States has been a force for stability in the world, that a lot of what we think of as a stable international system, not to mention a prosperous one, is because the United States has been willing to step up and to try to be the provider of a security commons, the provider of an economic commons—sometimes with not much benefit to ourselves.  When I hear this, I think, “Do you really think the world is better with the United States stepping back?”  Well, take a look out of your window at Vladimir Putin.  Take a look out of your window at Hamas.  Take a look out of your window at what Xi Jinping is doing in the South China Sea or in Taiwan.  If you really want the United States to step back, that’s what you’re going to get.

Yes, America is not perfect.  I come from segregated Birmingham, Alabama.  I was a little girl at a time when you could not go to a movie theater or to a restaurant.  Speaking of terrorism, I had a classmate killed in the 16th Street bombing of that church in Birmingham in September of 1963.  I don’t look at the United States through rose-colored glasses, but I can tell you there is no country like it on the face of the earth with this kind of power and this kind of capability that has tried—sometimes a little bit clumsily, sometimes a little bit failingly—to provide for a more prosperous, more democratic, and safer world.

I believe that Americans carry simultaneously in their heads two very different thoughts.  One is, “Haven’t we done enough? We defeated the Soviet Union.  We unified Germany.  We liberated Eastern Europe.  We were able to defeat at least al-Qaeda.  Haven’t we done enough?  Can’t somebody else do it?”  I understand that sense of exhaustion.  On the other hand, other Americans carry in their heads, “I can’t watch Syrian babies choke on nerve gas.  I can’t watch the massacre of the people in Sderot.  I can’t watch as a large country decides to extinguish its smaller neighbor to rebuild an empire.”  And then Americans say, “If not us, then who?”  And under those circumstances, Americans can be led to take this burden, if you want to call it that, or this obligation, to be a part of a more stable world.  I’m just looking for American leaders who are willing to say that.

As Law Professor Glenn Reynolds would say, "Read the whole thibg."

Regards  —  Cliff