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RedditThe American-sponsored Middle East peace conference (or meeting or get-together) expected to be held in Annapolis , Maryland later this month has more to do with providing Secretary of State Condoleezza a much-needed photo op to repair her tarnished legacy than creating the groundwork for a just and comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Besides the need to repair her legacy, Rice urgently needs to buy Arab support for the Administration's war in Iraq and its escalating threats against Iran. As a result, after years of scorning Arab-Israeli diplomacy, Rice has become such a freqent visitor to the region that she given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: 'lecondel." According to the New York Times, the verb --based on Ms. Rice's first name-- means " to come and go for meetings that produce few results."
But Rice has produced results. Disastrous ones. Responsibility for this war and occupation lies with her as much as anybody in the Bush Administration. She was perhaps the worst national security adviser in the office's history, as Slate's Fred Kaplan recently argued. (And she's had some tough competition.) And as a former security realist turned messianic "democratizer," Rice has squandered both democracy and realism in our engagement with the world. As Kaplan put it well, " Rice remains one of the architects of a fantasy foreign policy, and her record as secretary of state gives little hope that she'll be able to reverse that verdict in the administration's final months."
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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Posted by Will C. at 11/17/2007 @ 12:58am
more chance to show off the go-go boots
Posted by Will C. at 11/17/2007 @ 12:58am
look at where her money comes from and you understand ms. rice. like all morally chalenged neocons...follow the money. she's got an oil tanker named after her...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 11/17/2007 @ 01:30am
and a hebrew verb! lmao
Posted by ibbleblibble at 11/17/2007 @ 01:31am
Nothing new will ever happen in the Israeli-Palestinian issue if the US doesn't move from its pro Israel to a neutral (or quasi neutral) position. Ms. Rice has just followed that tradition of the US government that is more accentuated in the Rep party.
To talk and negotiate and to have a possibility of success, we need to be ready to give up something. Ms. Rice does not even have the imagination to propose something new and acceptable for both parties, nor the will to be equidistant from both sides and to be ready to be tough with Israel if it were necessary. How can the Arabs trust us? The road back is very hard now because they have been hurt in their independence and their culture, we have help breed all these extremist groups, period.
Posted by Frank42 at 11/17/2007 @ 03:57am
Rice is ineffective because she has been unable to assert any vision or ideas of her own and simply does what she is told.
When your boss has a cowboy mentality and sees the world as "us vs. them", how can Rice or anyone who works for this president do anything meaningful on the diplomatic stage?
Posted by Metteyya at 11/17/2007 @ 09:11am
birth pangs of mediocrity........................................
Posted by frosty zoom at 11/17/2007 @ 09:30am
President Hillary (or Barack or John) is going to need THE smartest guy/gal in the room at SecState to clean up this g.d. mess!
Posted by Mask at 11/17/2007 @ 09:56am
Dingbat Rice is ineffective, and the mainstream media lies when they say she is a counterweight to Cheney's madman ignorance. Dingbat Rice has proved that it is possible to get A's at Stanford and still be dumb as a post on matters of common sense. Dingbat Rice hates the Palestinians as much as any other neo-Con fanatic - only the American people who believe the blatant lies of the mainstream media believe otherwise. To the dung heap of history with her and the oil tanker she rode in on.
Posted by conshame at 11/17/2007 @ 11:10am
Posted by MASK 11/17/2007 @ 09:56am
if you have not seen this you have to! more subversive than V and a hell of a lot funnier....
ourfuture [en.wikipedia.org]
Posted by ibbleblibble at 11/17/2007 @ 12:22pm
Off the topic but worthwhile I think.
He is the true candidate for change in this election. And change is desperately needed at this point in history.
Posted by LARRYB 11/17/2007 @ 09:55am
And he polls at 3% among DEMOCRATS.
So...if he does that badly among DEMOCRATS, how does he win with the independents?
Posted by MASK 11/17/2007 @ 10:03am
Q. And the point completely missed here is what?
A. How in the hell does the candidate with the most refreshingly honest and sane answers on the most critical issues America and the world faces manage to garner a vanishingly tiny fraction of the Democratic vote?
To pursue that rabbit is to enter the warped world of Washington politics and intrigue that is far more psychedelic and deranged than any 60's acid trip could have possibly entertained.
And it is that same shape-shifting bizarro land that has the blubbering masses of umbilically-connected-to-their-TV Americans in thrall to the candidacy of Ruppert "Emperor Palpatine" Murdoch's wench, Hillary.
I highly recommend the recent --Nov 14-16-- Counterpunch.org three-part series on the tarnished arc our new Queen of Mean's rise.
Excerpt:
In fact, Mrs. Clinton was not a particularly good lawyer and would have had trouble making any honest list of the 100 best lawyers in Little Rock. In their political biography, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. tell the story about the National Law Journal and also probe her lawyerly skills when she was at Rose Law. She only tried five cases and confided to Vince Foster--another Rose Law partner--that she was terrified of juries. So Foster had to accompany her to court. Because of her lack of prowess in the courtroom, she had to make her way at Rose Law by working her connections as the State's first lady to bring in clients, and even then her annual partner's share was mostly below $100,000--the lowest in the firm and very small potatoes for one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America....
Even as Hillary Clinton was making trouble for herself and Bill in her legal and business dealings, she was reinventing Bill as a politician. Defeat in 1980 after his first two-year gubernatorial term was a cataclysmic event. Bill called it a "near death experience". According to Gerth and Van Natta, it was "the only time anyone has seen Hillary Clinton cry in public". Bill was inclined to throw in the political towel and go back to being a law professor in Fayetteville, where he would doubtless be roosting in tenured bliss to this day, plump and pony-tailed, fragrant with marijuana and still working his way through an endless roster of coeds. But in 1980, over a funereal breakfast of instant grits, Vernon Jordan brokered a deal: Bill Clinton would give up being a southern populist in the mold of Orval Faubus, six-term governor of Arkansas. Southern populism involved offending powerful corporations. Bill lost in 1980 because not only had he taken the un-populist course of hiking the rate on car registration, he'd angered Weyerhaeuser and Tyson Foods. So, for his comeback he would remake himself as a neoliberal. Hillary Rodham would give up insisting on keeping her maiden name and become Hillary Clinton. The man charged with supervising the Clintons' makeover was selected by Hillary: Dick Morris, a political consultant known for his work for Southern racists like Jesse Helms. Morris ultimately guided President Bill Clinton into the politics of triangulation, outflanking the Republicans from the right on race, crime, morals posturing and deference to corporations. As Hillary said in 1980, "If you want to be in this business, this is the type of person you have to deal with".
Posted by b_kool_66 at 11/17/2007 @ 1:02pm
Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 11/17/2007 @ 12:22pm
Sounds like a comedy version of Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"!
Posted by Mask at 11/17/2007 @ 1:15pm
Posted by MASK 11/17/2007 @ 1:15pm
its reel funny! mike judge...huh huh huh...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 11/17/2007 @ 1:30pm
Consider that there is a ratio of the number of Isralis compared to the number of Israelis who have been killed as a result of the occupation of Palestinian lands.
Consider also that there are far fewer Palestinians than Israelis, and far more Palestinians killed than Israelis killed. The ratio of total Palestinians to Palestinians killed is therefore much greater.
The Palestinians only want a little bit of land, a little bit of water, and the right to exist - they do exist, they do very much exist. It is a FACT, that Palestinians DO exist.
Posted by conshame at 11/17/2007 @ 2:40pm
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
Anyone who hasn't seen this should. It's an eye opening look at reality; relevant to everything in our lives. Whether or not it's all true is certainly arguable, but it absolutely calls one to question the true ambitions of the neo-con movement (among many other things).
Posted by MATTMAN at 11/17/2007 @ 4:02pm
Why blame Condi for the traitorous affinities of the Party of Big Oil? If there is one policy that can be truly said to have originated in the pea brain of Bush Jr., it's the treasonous appeasement of his pals, the Saudis, who thus far have gotten away with sponsoring 9/11, the Taliban's conquest and reconquest of Afghanistan, and the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
As for Palestine, it's the model for the fascists' neverending war paradigm: war profiteers have a steady income, terrorist recruiters have a steady supply of angry young men, and the dictators in the region have an external enemy to help them divert attention from their own oppression of the people.
Posted by samcrossett at 11/17/2007 @ 4:16pm
Posted by SAMCROSSETT 11/17/2007 @ 4:16pm |
Cunilingus Rice is as guilty as dubya, is as guilty as Cheney, as Kristol, etc...
This was a team effort.
Posted by MATTMAN at 11/17/2007 @ 4:21pm
I agree with you reasoned writing Frank42.
And thanks for the film links, guys. Satire is as necessary tool for the promotion of positive change/reform as musica, n'est-ce pas? Idiocracy looks funny, and I'll check out Zeitgeistmovie.com when able.
Hope your day's been beautiful.
Posted by lewwelge at 11/17/2007 @ 4:40pm
Right wing Israelis who deny the existence of Palestinians while fanning the flames, hated Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton - they love Bush and dingbat Rice. There are other Israelis who want to have peace, and all the Palestinians ask is a recognition that they exist plus a little bit of their own land and water.
Posted by conshame at 11/17/2007 @ 8:58pm
Posted by RIO BRAVO 11/17/2007 @ 8:14pm
That the best you can do, RIO?....that Condi is "just as bad" as Jimmy Carter?
Boy, some defense!
heheh
Posted by Mask at 11/17/2007 @ 9:12pm
Posted by RIO BRAVO 11/17/2007 @ 9:55pm
I dunno. Name "all" the administrations that have lost 3800+ lives in the Middle East and squandered closing in on a TRILLION dollars?
Posted by Mask at 11/17/2007 @ 9:58pm
Posted by RIO BRAVO 11/18/2007 @ 01:19am
It's almost funny but no, it's just plain sad because Rio-- you actually believe in this hoax, and this myth that is the war on terror! You're not part of that elite, wealthy 'sphere of influence' that performed this practical joke on the world for the sake of profit. You seriously just don't get it, that it's all bullshit. That you ascribe a sense of purpose to this madness...
I pity the foo!
Posted by MATTMAN at 11/18/2007 @ 04:43am
Posted by RIO BRAVO 11/18/2007 @ 01:19am
RIO, give me the total time of "the 1980s years of peace" you want to discuss, and how those soldiers died (training accidents?...okay, throw that into TODAY...or have training accidents suddenly ended under Bush?) Then we'll discuss how many have died in the past 4 and a 1/2 years and compare.
Second, okay...how MANY TRILLIONS was spent in Vietnam? And how much of it was put on a "credit card" for US to pay 20 years later and let Johnson and Nixon off the hook?
Posted by Mask at 11/18/2007 @ 08:55am
Rio=There has never been an Republican president who fought against threats to America.Bush has done nothing against those who attacked us on 9/11.Saddam was not a threat and Iraq has no relevance to the war against radical Islam.Do you have any facts to back up your claim that the war in Iraq is winding down and is a success?I don't call creating a conservative Islamic state in Iraq a success,but the jihadists and you do call that success.Why are you and the looney Muslims on the same page?
Posted by i'm nobody at 11/18/2007 @ 12:40pm
Rio=Nixon was not a Democrat as you claimed.
Posted by i'm nobody at 11/18/2007 @ 12:42pm
mattman, i have not yet finished zeitgeist yet. i am beginning part 2. i think everyone should watch this. it is most excellent. for years i have researched the ideas in part 1. this is all true. i just wish they would have delved further into the title "christos." it would have strengthened the argument. and there is some argument in the academic community about the gender of the deity minos. thank you very much for posting this important film.
Posted by loveloki at 11/18/2007 @ 1:00pm
Posted by LOVELOKI 11/18/2007 @ 1:00pm
I'm glad you enjoy it! There is an option on the homepage of that site that allows you to download the movie as a bit torrent file, which can then be made to disk. I've decided to produce several copies of this film and distribute it as often as possible.
Posted by MATTMAN at 11/18/2007 @ 1:19pm
Ha Ha, Liberals waged the Vietnam war, Ha Ha. Big joke, Ha Ha. Vietnam was waged by Liberals and Conservatives tried to stop it. Ha Ha. Liberals apparently started the Vietnam war when it was a bad idea, then, by the end - when the Vietnam war had become a good idea, Liberals then forced Americans to surrender - on the verge of victory.
I mean, there is a point where it becomes obvious that Conservatives just plain think frustrating intelligent Americans with their nonsense is funny.
Ha Ha - the Vietnam war is a good argument for scorching the Earth against the Palestian people. Conservatives crack their dammn jokes, meanwhile American power blood and prestige continues to seep into the sand.
Posted by conshame at 11/18/2007 @ 1:41pm
Posted by CONSHAME 11/18/2007 @ 1:41pm
CS, who DID start the Vietnam War? (on our side that is)
Posted by Mask at 11/18/2007 @ 2:14pm
The Vietnam war is a great argument for continuing the occupation of Palestine - if you're a Conservative. So hey, let's talk about the Vietnam war. Nevermind the stated topic of the thread.
Posted by conshame at 11/18/2007 @ 3:22pm
Wimp "Moderate" Democrats, fearful of being branded as soft on the Vietnamese people by Conservatives.
Posted by conshame at 11/18/2007 @ 3:23pm
Or, maybe it was Liberals with the foresight to predict that in just a few years the Vietnam war would morph into a good idea.
Posted by conshame at 11/18/2007 @ 3:29pm
Rio=Nixon was not a Democrat as you claimed.
Posted by I'M NOBODY 11/18/2007 @ 12:42pm
Go easy on RIO. RIO never made it past the 2nd grade.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 11/19/2007 @ 09:17am
Posted by MATTMAN 11/18/2007 @ 1:19pm
thanks again mattman. i'm going to do the same.
Posted by loveloki at 11/19/2007 @ 10:04am
Go easy on RIO. RIO never made it past the 2nd grade.
Posted by WOLFGANG1 11/19/2007 @ 09:17am
I'm afraid I'll need a better reason then that.
Posted by Dr Decibels at 11/19/2007 @ 11:53am
I'm afraid I'll need a better reason then that.
Posted by DR DECIBELS 11/19/2007 @ 11:53am
DR DB,
Sorry, but that's the best I can do in Rio's defense. I figure 2nd grade is Rio's education level because my 2nd grade daughter would put forth a better arguement than Rio. Logical reasoning doesn't seem to be important to Rio's position.
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 11/19/2007 @ 12:11pm
I shall quote W. C. Fields: Never give a sucker an even break.
And RIO and his ilk are the biggest of suckers.....
Posted by Dr Decibels at 11/19/2007 @ 2:38pm