Why Condolezza Rice Should Not Be Confirmed

As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded confirmation hearings for the office of Secretary of State, the presumptive appointee, Dr. Condolezza Rice, put on a display of the abrasive, uninformed style and lack of substance we can expect from her if she is confirmed.

Rice sailed through most of the questions without providing substantive answers for the main part - much like her colleague, Alberto Gonzalez, in his confirmation hearing for Attorney General - and at one point, in a heated exchange with Senator Barbara Boxer, actually asking that her integrity not be impugned.

The brief but spirited cat-fight with Senator Boxer revealed a side of Ms. Rice that we have rarely seen. She was petulant, annoyed, frustrated, flustered and confused. She could not answer Senator Boxer’s charges with any degree of what could be called acuity and her image seemed to slip from that of an iron maiden with unshakable confidence to a frightened, embarrassed, defensive child.

Boxer’s assault was a welcome respite from the softballs lobbed by the majority Senators and served notice that Ms. Rice will be an abject failure as our nation’s top diplomat. Senator Boxer pointed out that Ms. Rice could not provide direct answers to hard questions and that in her role as the president’s National Security Advisor she was more propagandist for the war in Iraq than the analytical decision-maker she should have been.

While Boxer pointed to inaccuracies and innuendo that Rice mouthed in the leadup to war, Rice alternately avoided giving an answer and denying fault before finally breaking down into a hissing retort directed at the senator.

Ms. Rice asked that her integrity, character and honesty not be drawn into question, but Boxer prevailed. For what reason do we go through the ritual of confirmation hearings if not to examine the honesty, character and integrity of the people who will be administering our policy, our laws and the path of our nation?

The hearings, like so much else which surrounds this administration, were nothing more than an exercise in futility. The administration has its marching orders and the compliant congress - Democrats and Republicans alike - are all too willing to swing to the beat despite repeated indications that policy has become a top-down function, rigid and unbending, undeniable and irresponsible.

For the last four years, Ms. Rice has been little more than a mouthpiece for the president and vice president and their warmongering, fear-induced war on terror. From top to bottom, the administration is supposed to be seen as infallible, despite ever-increasing evidence to the contrary. Ms. Rice is the perfect example of the mind-numbing acceptance of policy as reality that pervades this administration and has filtered down to every level of support and opinion.

This kind of statesmanship, which requires neither thought nor analysis, but only loyalty to the party line, falls far short of what the American people and the rest of the world expect and deserve. Ms. Rice is nothing more than a tool of the administration with which they wish to bludgeon world opinion into a reeking mush.

Appointees the president has proposed thus far have displayed a level of incompetence matched only by their cloying cronyism and adherence to the party line, no matter how misguided or repulsive that policy may be.

As Ms. Rice takes her place on the world stage, dealing with informed, intelligent diplomats from both our allies and our enemies, the fear is that she will be woefully inadequate for the task ahead. The hope is that as Secretary of State she will seek to mend our strained relations abroad and bring home messages of hope and unity. The reality is that she most likely will bring with her nothing of substance, no new ideas, but rather bore and insult the diplomats in the world of nations with the hollow rhetoric of war and democracy, militarism and fear.

After the admirable efforts of Colin Powell, who likely resigned his post because he could no longer continue to carry out the charade he was forced to play - that of showing outward support for policies which he, in his heart, disagreed - Ms. Rice will be a poor replacement.

Powell, always the good soldier, stood by, loyal to the president. Once Rice takes over at State, we can only hope that Mr. Powell becomes an ardent critic of administration policy.

Ms. Rice not only is possessed of an abrasive and stultified personality, but she is also particularly unqualified for the position of Secretary of State. She has no foreign affairs nor diplomatic background, she has never been an ambassador to even the tiniest of nations.

While she was first a student and then a professor of political science and international affairs at Stanford University, Ms. Rice established a nearly impeccable academic background. Disappointingly, her ability as a negotiator and diplomat is suspect.

She ostensibly has the ability to mimic the half-truths of her bosses, but her ability to forge new policy on her own is seriously in doubt. As National Security Advisor she has been an abject failure, first ignoring obvious intelligence that Osama bin Laden was plotting to attack the United States, then accepting flawed intelligence that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction. Her incompetence or negligence led directly to the disaster of 9/11 in one instance and to the dismal reality that is Iraq today in the other.

The Senate, instead of rubber-stamping her confirmation, should more closely examine her past record, her negligible diplomatic credentials, her unwillingness to accept responsibility, admit mistakes or change policy, and reject her as unqualified.

Rick Gagliano

The author is publisher of Downtown Magazine, and the writer of the petition which calls for a Congressional investigation into the election irregularities of 2004.

The petition was started on November 7, 2004 and can be signed online at http://www.petitiononline.com/uselect/petition.html

Downtown Magazine is a general interest website, with a current focus on elections, politics and the war in Iraq. It is available 24/7/365 on the web at http://www.dtmagazine.com