She also praised Egypt's thorny relationship with its own liberal reformers, and tipped her hat to Anwar Sadat who had the good sense to make peace with Israel, and dump Arab statism for neoliberalism. She then dropped this bomb: "For 60 years . . . the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy . . . in the Middle East--and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."
I'm not sure how many addresses like this Rice delivered during the second half of the Bush-Cheney era. It was the type of speech (if you excise the back slaps for the local autocrat) you want but don't expect US Secretaries of State to give. The problem then was the problem now: freedom and democracy cannot be granted to some, but opposed for others. You can't support them for preferred people(s), deny them to people(s) considered undeserving, and avoid hypocrisy corrosive to the values themselves.
The administration faced an excellent test of its "freedom agenda' a mere six months later following parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. No people in the region had been as abused, degraded, or humiliated. No people suffered more for the right to self-determination. Here was Rice's chance to back fine words with courageous action.
Oops, Washington, we have a problem. Hamas won 76 of 132 seats in the Legislative Council. Rice's reaction? A political party could not "have one foot in politics and the other in terror. Our position on Hamas has therefore not changed." How could an American Secretary of State not recognize an occupied peoples' legally-sanctioned right to armed resistance (which does not extend to the deliberate targeting of civilians)? How could an American Secretary of State not recognize a democratic election, universally seen as free and fair, regardless of who won it?
The United States will never live up to the values and expectations of the Bush and Rice speeches until it breaks definitively with its double standards. And until it finally takes off the radioactive handcuffs of the US-Israel alliance. No critical US distance from Israel, no freedom or democracy for Palestine. Nor will we witness an end to American hypocrisy.
Rehabilitation time for Condi? Not even close. Until she comes clean about her personal responsibility for the Bush administration's historic crimes, she should be left to languish comfortably at Stanford and the Hoover Institution. (I know, you can envision less cozy sinecures. Me too.)
You can do it, Prof. Rice. Start small--admit your central role in the Valerie Plame affair. You can move on to torture later. If she's smart, she won't wait as long as McNamara to make peace with her (and our) demons. She has demons, right?
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