Has Condi or anyone in this administration ever read Sun Tzu?

Posted by: This Machine Kills Fascists at February 4, 2007 06:11 AM | Permalink to this comment

I have never understood the condi worship especially that shown by those like Andrew Sullivan who were for the war before they were against it. Either you believe that she was an active participant in the planning and execution of the debacle, in which case she deserves to be in the dock next to Rummy and BushCheney, or that she was not involved, in which case she is both ineffective and incompetent.
So which is it?
Perhaps I should be grateful that she has done so poor a job of promoting the administration's "goals" but really we are talking the world's security and people's deaths here.
She has produced no new ideas, speaks in fatuous and empty phases which do not bear even cursory anaslysis, and seems hell bent on destroying what little goodwill the United States retains in the world.
It says a very great deal that we all know about her piano playing and fashion sense and flirtations yet nobody can give a straight forward explication of her thinking on, as one example, the problems of Pakistanian democracy. Lord save us.

Posted by: jaimie t at February 4, 2007 11:21 AM | Permalink to this comment

She deserves it. She's had a free ride up til now. Her abject failure to properly manage the machinations of Rumsfeld/Cheney/Rove as was her NSA responsibility makes her essentially a complicit actuator of those machinations - which indeed maybe she was. Maybe she didn't fail as NSA but was actually a willing member of the 'cabal' as Powell's aide has called it - in which case may her fall from grace continue unabated.

Posted by: saintsimon at February 4, 2007 12:47 PM | Permalink to this comment

I heard someone mentioning the Super Bowl the other day, and with it they brought up Smirk's minority hiring record(Powell, Condi, AG, ... ). What they didn't say was that Smirk and Vader either hired incompetents(Gonzales and Condi), or shit all over the competent one they did hire(Powell). I think that shows what they really think.

Posted by: This Machine Kills Fascists at February 4, 2007 05:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

After she told that filthy lie during the 911 Commission hearings (the 8/5/01 PDB was just providing "historical" information about bin Laden), I never understood how she had any credibility.

Or maybe that's what she believes she is supposed to do -- provide unimportant historical information instead of actually doing something.

Posted by: dmbeaster at February 4, 2007 05:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

Question: If Powell and Wilkerson (not to mention Bush, the CIA, Congress, the media, and the American public) got gamed by the OVP Gang, why is everyone so down on Condi for getting played, too?

I'm not trying to argue she's done a good job, by any means. But it's hard to see how any Sec. of State could be very effective in light of the bill of goods she's been given to sell.

Posted by: Headline Junky at February 4, 2007 05:44 PM | Permalink to this comment

Condi is smart but unscrupulous. She did not originate the crazy idea that the US could attack Iraq and cow the whole Middle East into submission, but she went along and supplied good words, like Goebbels. Efforts to translate our material and military superiority into power over others naturally provoke a pushback. The administration's effort to establish a system of Central Asian and Middle Eastern client states (Rice’s "New Middle East") has produced two continuing wars, or tarbabies, and worsening situations in Lebanon, Gaza and the Palestinian territories, and Israel. Now she wants to attack Iran rather than talk with them.

She deserves much more blame than Congress but Congress and AIPAC knew what was going on and deemed it best to keep quiet.

Posted by: tramposo at February 4, 2007 06:27 PM | Permalink to this comment

She snowed Madeline Albright's father, too; she was supposedly his favorite pupil.

Considering all of the top positions she's had (starting with provost at Stanford University), and the fact that she's not done well at any of them, yet continued to be promoted, I have a funny feeling much of her success is due to what we can now call The Biden Factor: she's an articulate, educated, well-dressed black person who white people feel comfortable with, because she soothes and flatters their worldview. And she plays that for all it's worth.

As to why Bush feels so strongly about her, I think it's a combination of The Biden Factor plus an affinity for another person who keeps failing upward.

Posted by: CaseyL at February 4, 2007 08:12 PM | Permalink to this comment

I'm not sure if Greg is pleading guilty to having been critical of Sec. Rice recently, or to having given her pretty much of a pass as long as Donald Rumsfeld was around.

Posted by: Zathras at February 4, 2007 09:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

Or, as the saying goes:

Out of the frying pan and into the Friar.

Or

From Bat to Verse

Posted by: Azael at February 4, 2007 10:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

Anyone with an oil tanker named after them had to be suss as regards middle east policy.

Any NSC head who got stovepiped had to be, at best, incompetent.

Anyone rabbiting on about mushroom clouds in the pre-Iraq context had to be bullshitting.

Anyone whose Freudian slippage vis-a-vis the President tended matrimonial was not exhibiting due objectivity.

For the past decade and a half, any narrow cold war scholar has been ill-equipped to analyse foreign affairs.

Posted by: AlanDownunder at February 5, 2007 02:55 AM | Permalink to this comment

Ditto, Greg.

Posted by: Dan at February 5, 2007 03:55 AM | Permalink to this comment

OK, next administration I want to see all WASPs and Asians in the Cabinet, except maybe a Jew at Treasury. No more affirmative action hires in important positions.

And when will everyone stop kissing Colin Powell's ass? He gets more fawning and uncritical press than John McCain used to before he supported the surge.

Posted by: Dave at February 5, 2007 03:57 AM | Permalink to this comment

What they didn't say was that Smirk and Vader either hired incompetents(Gonzales and Condi), or shit all over the competent one they did hire(Powell). I think that shows what they really think.

Snow was treated as badly as Powell, and both Condi and Gonzales are closer to competent than Michael Brown or Chertoff. I think it's fair to say that Bush prefers loyalty to competence and blind obedience to independent thought, but in a colorblind fashion.

Posted by: Mike Schilling at February 5, 2007 05:14 AM | Permalink to this comment

Condi is a serious woman who discusses serious issues in a serious way in these serious times. You, Greg, and all of your readers are simply not serious if you do not support endless war. You, and the MSM, and the general public are not allowed to grow tired of it. We must fight, fight, fight because that's what Winston Churchill would do. We must be Churchill and not Chamberlain. Appeasement is bad. And George W. Bush is the most brilliant, steadfast, courageous leader of the past millennium. His face should supersede all of the other faces on Rushmore.

Posted by: Few Fewitt at February 5, 2007 06:07 AM | Permalink to this comment

Well said, Few. Eminently sober.

Posted by: AlanDownunder at February 5, 2007 09:46 AM | Permalink to this comment

Condi has been a huge disappointment. She was a Soviet Studies major specifically, not a Foreign Policy major: and it shows. She never made the mental adjustment to the post Soviet Bloc world, like so many others. She has less excuse than some. This Administrations post 911 foreign policy has been delusional and counter productive, and I have been saying that all along. Truly, I wonder why, after lo these five years of knuckleheaded failure, people have not begun to think upon the writings of those people who w e r e correct in their assessments? Hindsight is not 20 20 as the saying so glibly goes, and that is all too apparent.

Posted by: Tom Perry at February 5, 2007 02:07 PM | Permalink to this comment

FeW,
Well said.... but one broad, meaningless, fear evoking term to be added to your post to justify the self destruction of the virtues of western world...."ISLAMOFASCIST"!

Posted by: centrist at February 5, 2007 03:18 PM | Permalink to this comment

What tore it for me with Condi was her inept handling of the Lebanon situation. The US should have nipped that stupid little incursion in the bud. US policy is still paying the price for that easily avoidable fiasco.

Posted by: Appalled Moderate at February 5, 2007 04:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

Great point, centrist. Death-seeking Muslims who chant "Death to America" are nothing to fear -- especially if they get their hands on nukes. Skilled diplomacy by men with expensive and tasteful educations will surely get them to understand that setting off mushroom clouds will not make the hidden Imam reappear from his well.

Posted by: Fred at February 5, 2007 04:57 PM | Permalink to this comment

Chanting death to american is a far cry from a "mushroom cloud".
The endless war in the middle eat I assume you advocate for will do much to cause people there to shout "death to america" but will not stop the mushroom cloud you fear. Pakistan already has the bomb,proliferated, and has through surrogates already killed thousands of americans...how about the pakistani "islamofascist"? How about lose russian nuclear supplies?

The first point of any conflict is to know ones enemies! Any use of or belief in the term "Islamofascist" shows a exaggeration of certain threats and a neglect of others. It is a cool sounding term but does not represent the compex threats the west faces.

Posted by: centrist at February 5, 2007 06:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Yeah, I guess this blog has been guilty of this some as well..."

She'll manage and, besides, history can properly adjudge her. Don't look now, but Condi is quiety busy replicating Keenan's methodology as he detailed it as Mr. X in "Foreign Affairs." She may be on to something, apart from her heeding the ageless counsel of a legendary diplomat whose own reputation was also affirmed late.

The jihadists, against whom this war is being waged de facto, are not dissimilar to the early Stalininst Politburo boys: they are ideological zealots, hardcore anti-West, power-maniacal, assured of their infallibility and transfixed upon the theory of (our) inevitable doom. Whew. In the case of Jihadists, to make matters worse, they even have god on their side. The Soviets at least had the dignity to leave him alone (which is more than can be said of either Bush or the jihadists.)

Condi is dealing her diplomatic hand accordingly. It is a Bush martialism squared, the politics of hardball, or what Kennan called the constant application of counter-forces. She wants pressures applied daily, military pressures, since that is singulary what the zealots and harliners grasp (as it was what the Soviets grasped.) Pity the Left continues to dither.

Dealing in intimate dialogue, say, with Syria or Iran or the multi-faced insurgent periphery, as advised by the ISG mindset, is pissing in the wind. Her mission is containment of those dark forces by conquering the day, by conquering the city, by conquering the spirit. So she concedes nothing. Thus we see a Lebanon bombed until the place becomes a parking lot and more troops in Baghdad. Rumsfeld was cut from the same, as was Powell, interestingly, except the latter goofed when he allowed the former to employ a military-lite intervention when it should have been munitions-maximus. Condi won't dare repeat that mistake-so forget Assad or Ahmadinejad joining us anytime soon at the world poker table.

More to the point. For all of their dictatorship-of-the-proletariat rhetoric, the Soviets had the virtue of lending an ear whenever a diplomatic overture aided their cause. The hostile forces in Iraq have no such amenability. They are deaf, dumb and blind to bargaining. Reminds me of my wife. I suppose we can attribute that condition to 30 years of Husseinian barbarity and a concomitant Hobbesian flaw in their DNA. Bin Laden's thugs are just plain stupid and have only self-deception to blame. Plus, their orgasm is death, and you can't much negotiate with a corpse.

Condi should continue with her politics of artful bludgeoning until the cows come home. To steal from Keenan's remarks on the Kremlin's worldview at the time, this is no time for a palsied decrepitude in diplomacy, even if the Gregs of the world want to spank her for occasionally violating curfew and for not calling home.

-resh

Posted by: reshuffle at February 5, 2007 08:24 PM | Permalink to this comment

resh:

Dealing in intimate dialogue, say, with Syria or Iran or the multi-faced insurgent periphery, as advised by the ISG mindset, is pissing in the wind. Her mission is containment of those dark forces by conquering the day, by conquering the city, by conquering the spirit. So she concedes nothing. Thus we see a Lebanon bombed until the place becomes a parking lot and more troops in Baghdad.

Gee, you reckon? The dumbest thing I have ever seen on a blog.

Posted by: Odradek at February 5, 2007 09:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

Headline Junkie asked:

If Powell and Wilkerson (not to mention Bush, the CIA, Congress, the media, and the American public) got gamed by the OVP Gang, why is everyone so down on Condi for getting played, too?

Where do Powell & Wilkerson work now?

Where does Condi work?

Questions that answer your question.

Posted by: Anderson at February 5, 2007 10:10 PM | Permalink to this comment

Is "reshuffle" code for "Trevino"?

Posted by: Anderson at February 6, 2007 02:18 AM | Permalink to this comment

Mike Schilling,
I can't agree with you re: Gonzales. Have you paid attention to his appearances before Congress or his other public statements? I know plenty of Dems who say that Gonzales incompetence makes them wish Ed Meese was AG, and every Dem I know hates Meese.

Posted by: This Machine Kills Fascists at February 6, 2007 09:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

"What tore it for me with Condi was her inept handling of the Lebanon situation."

She lost me long before, when she made her comment about not being able to predict that terrorists would fly airplanes into buildings. If she had taken her brief as national security adviser seriously, she would, after the 9/11 attacks, have educated herself on the threat posed by al Qaeda. She would have learned that flying airplanes into building was an idea that had been floating around in al Qaeda circles for a while, and that there had even been a plot (which the French were fortunately able to foil) to fly an airplane into the Eiffel tower. Anybody can be wrong, but you would think that, in the wake of 9/11, any loyal American in a position of responsibility for America's national security would at least try to figure out how to protect the nation from future attacks.

Posted by: Kenneth Almquist at February 7, 2007 06:01 AM | Permalink to this comment

I suspect that you misunderstand Rice's role in the Bush malAdministration. Her role as National Security Advisor was never to advise the malAdministration, and her role as Secretary of State is not to negotiate with foreign governments to come to mutually-agreeable resolutions to identified issues. Her role is and always has been to be a mouthpiece for the Bush malAdministration.

As NSA, what did she do? She primarily went on television to push the Bush malAdministration's talking points and policies. Those talking points and policies rarely made any sense, but that's what she did. As Secretary of State, what has she been doing? Essentially the same, with the addition of mouthing the Bush malAdministration's talking points and policies to other countries, with no negotiation to come up with mutually-agreeable resolutions.

Let's understand something. Rice is a public relations person for the Bush malAdministration's policies. Nothing more, nothing less. Some Rice defenders tout the fact that she was provost of Stanford University as suggesting that she has some special skills. But I will remind you that the primary job of a head of a university--particularly a private university--is fund-raising. A public relations job. And that's her special skill--public relations.

So don't bash Rice. She's only doing her job. Public relations for the Bush malAdministration. She's just a cog in the wheel. It's the Bush malAdministration that should be the target of peoples' wrath.

Lest anyone misunderstand: /sarcasm

Posted by: raj at February 7, 2007 03:25 PM | Permalink to this comment

raj, it looks like you're saying you were being sarcastic with that last post.

But it looks like the most plausible explanation. Did you really not mean it? I sure don't see anything there to be sarcastic about.

Posted by: J Thomas at February 7, 2007 04:06 PM | Permalink to this comment

J Thomas at February 7, 2007 04:06 PM |

But it looks like the most plausible explanation. Did you really not mean it?

Yes.

Posted by: raj at February 7, 2007 05:02 PM | Permalink to this comment

Sorry

J Thomas at February 7, 2007 04:06 PM |

But it looks like the most plausible explanation. Did you really not mean it?

Yes, I meant it.

Posted by: raj at February 7, 2007 05:03 PM | Permalink to this comment

This Machine Kills Fascists:
About preferring Ed Meese to Gonzales: Machine, I will go you better, I think that just about the whole Reagan Administration Crew, with the exception of MacFarlane, Poindexter & crazy Oliver North is preferable to the Bush II Administration. As a lifelong democrat, I never thought I would believe anything like that!

Posted by: David All at February 7, 2007 10:59 PM | Permalink to this comment

David All: I think that just about the whole Reagan Administration Crew, with the exception of MacFarlane, Poindexter & crazy Oliver North is preferable to the Bush II Administration. As a lifelong democrat, I never thought I would believe anything like that!

David, I think Bush II is going to be remembered as worse than "Nixon without his China accomplishment".

I know a highly respected historian who told me that he thought Bush II was clearly the worst president in U.S. history, and that was before Katrina, before Iraq had decayed into the debacle it is now, before any number of subsequent blunders............

Posted by: Whammer at February 8, 2007 01:11 AM | Permalink to this comment

Irrespective of whether Bush II is the worst American president in history, it is fairly obvious that he is the most dangerous president ever. Not only to the rest of the world, but also to the United States itself.

Just imagine what he would have done if he had been president during the Cold War. He would have have been a disaster. I despised Nixon, but he was head and shoulders above this cretin of a president. I also didn't care for Clinton's actions in Somalia and the Balkans, but at least he had a bit of international support for what he did. This cretin of a president, Bush II, is like a bull in a china shop, and the idiots who have ever supported him seem to want to blame the china for the fact that it got broken. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way.

I always say "follow the money," but, regarding Bush II, the money trail doesn't even seem to add up.

Posted by: raj at February 8, 2007 05:24 AM | Permalink to this comment

reagan was the last "most dangerous" president.

nice funeral, though.

Posted by: neill at February 8, 2007 03:42 PM | Permalink to this comment

Whammer, Raj, This Machine Kills Fascists et al:
Unless by the end of the Bush/Cheney Presidency, the US is in or about ready to have a Civil War or if the World is in Global Depression, I believe that Bush II is safe from being considered the worst President ever! He may well go down though as the worse two term President the US has ever had.

Having typed the above, I realize the latter of the two disasters mentioned, Global Depression, might indeed result if Bush starts bombing Iran & Iran retailates by missile attacks against Persian Gulf oil tankers. Since Bush has given every indication of wanting to provoke a Tonkin Gulf type Incident in order to justify Bombing Iran, posibility of such a castasrophe has to be taken seriously & be prepared for.

Raj: Agree one of the many disquesting things about Bush & his remaining supporters is their total refusal to own to being responsible for what they done.

Oh, BTW, I believe Iran under its current Mullah leadership should not have nuclear weapons. Problem is I have no confidence in the Bush Administration's ability to conduct any military operation more complicated then a Boy Scout Jamboree!

Posted by: David All at February 8, 2007 05:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Has Condi or anyone in this administration ever read Sun Tzu?"
Posted by: This Machine Kills Fascists

Sun Tzu:

"All warfare is based on deception.

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

"He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign."

I always knew you liberals were actually the craftiest among us.

Posted by: neill at February 9, 2007 04:57 AM | Permalink to this comment

neill at February 9, 2007 04:57 AM |

Sun Tzu:

"He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign."

Ah. So Tzu was the origin of the Dolchstosslegende. Nice to know

On a broader note, it appears that our dear host, Mr. Djerijian, is unwilling to come into the Agora and defend or explain his earlier support for the Bush II malAdministration's idiotic attack on Iraq. Our dear host writes nicely (although a bit too much at length, but he can put subject and verb together properly), but it would be nice if he would explain himself. Being a Republican isn't enough. Some of us who used to vote Republican figured out that the Republicans were hypocrites decades ago. Try Nixon and Reagan. So, Mr. Djerijian, what is your excuse?

Posted by: raj at February 9, 2007 12:13 PM | Permalink to this comment

neill at February 9, 2007 04:57 AM |

Sun Tzu:

"He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign."

Ah. So Tzu was the origin of the Dolchstosslegende. Nice to know

On a broader note, it appears that our dear host, Mr. Djerijian, is unwilling to come into the Agora and defend or explain his earlier support for the Bush II malAdministration's idiotic attack on Iraq. Our dear host writes nicely (although a bit too much at length, but he can put subject and verb together properly), but it would be nice if he would explain himself. Being a Republican isn't enough. Some of us who used to vote Republican figured out that the Republicans were hypocrites decades ago. Try Nixon and Reagan. So, Mr. Djerijian, what is your excuse?

Posted by: raj at February 9, 2007 12:14 PM | Permalink to this comment