A Republican has harsh words for his party’s leaders:
Republicans have reached new lows in treating their supporters as a herd of stupid, unthinking cattle who are content to sit quietly as their rulers undermine national security and allow America’s defeat by Islamic extremists. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent performance on Jim Lehrer’s Newshour can only be explained by concluding either that Miss Rice is stupid, or that she and the Bush administration are confident Republicans are addled and will swallow any executive-branch bilge.
Now, Miss Rice is a brilliant, not a stupid woman. Her career is one of uninterrupted excellence, dedicated public service and steady professional advancement — a record, it must be noted, that no African American woman has achieved under Democratic auspices. Like Justice Thomas, Miss Rice is not the Democrats’ “kind” of African American.
Yet Miss Rice knowingly says stupid things and expects the party faithful like me to believe them. On Iraq, she told Mr. Lehrer “we must maintain political momentum” toward late-2005 elections, implying the electoral process itself will ensure “the insurgency loses any hope of holding a political base for their brutal and violent activities.”
This is nonsense. The Iraq insurgency is intensifying, meaning it already has a political base and that the base is growing; history proves insurgencies do not exist in hostile political environments. It also is absurd Western-think to suggest, as Miss Rice did, that successfully holding an election will discourage the insurgents and cause them to fold their tents and shelve their Kalashnikovs. In this regard, Miss Rice should review the situation developingin Afghanistan.
Topping this nonsense, Miss Rice advised the Newshour’s audience on the coming Iraqi constitution. “And I would caution,” Miss Rice said, “against reading drafts” of the constitution. Like the Wizard telling Dorothy and friends to ignore the man behind the curtain pulling levers, Miss Rice says the drafts are meaningless works-in-progress. Miss Rice and the administration, of course, count on Republicans following this stupid advice and not noticing until too late that the Iraqi constitution is creating an Islamic and anti-American state that will be a breeding-and-staging ground for extremists and a destabilizing force in the Middle East.
Remember when the pro-struggle cheerleaders were constantly making comparisons to the German and Japanese occupations? Remember the celebrating of the glorious new Iraqi constitution? And remember when the “purple finger” was being hailed as the great symbol of freedom and democracy? Now, it’s the next election in Iraq which will solve all problems and the next constitution which will somehow magically turn a backward nation with no Western tradition into the newest heirs of Athens and Rome.
It kind of reminds me of that inevitable withering away of the state predicted by Marx. When intellectuals resort to inexplicable hand-waving, it’s a pretty good sign that whatever they are pushing is poorly conceived and will never work as advertised.