Note to Rice: stay away from the historical analogies

February 27, 2007

In September, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested that opponents of the war are the moral equivalent of those who would tolerate slavery in 19th century America. She wasn’t kidding.

“I’m sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold,” Rice told Essence magazine. “I know there were people who said, ‘Why don’t we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'”

Even by the Bush administration’s absurdly low standards, this was a special kind of stupid. For Rice, Democratic criticism of the war is analogous to support for Southern succession in the United States 150 years ago. For someone who considers herself something of a scholar, Rice should be embarrassed to say such inane things in public.

But Rice has become increasingly fond of mindless historical analogies. Apparently, comparing Iraq war critics to slavery supporters wasn’t quite inflammatory enough for the nation’s chief diplomat. This week, Rice had Godwin’s Law in her sights.

“I know it’s extremely difficult. And yes, as the president has said, we’ve now overthrown Saddam Hussein. We are in a different situation, even, some would say, a different war. But the consolidation of a stable and democratic Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is a part of what America owes to the Iraqi people, owes to the region and owes to ourselves so that our own security is there.

“Chris, it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change, then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.”

This poor woman clearly has no idea what she’s talking about.

Keith Olbermann delved into this in one of his special comments last night. (TP and C&L have video clips)

But Secretary of State Rice may have now taken the cake. On the Sunday morning interview show “Of Broken Record” on Fox, Dr. Rice spoke a paragraph, which if it had been included in a remedial history paper at the weakest high school in the nation would’ve gotten the writer an “F” — maybe an expulsion…. The secretary’s resume reads that she has a master’s degree and a Ph.D in political science. The interviewer should have demanded to see them, on the spot.

…We already have a subjectively false comparison between Hitler and Saddam. We already have a historically false comparison between Germany and Iraq. We already have blissful ignorance by our secretary of state about how this country got into the war against Hitler. But then there’s this part about changing “the resolution” about Iraq; that it would be as ridiculous in the secretary’s eyes as saying that after Hitler was defeated, we needed to go back to Congress to “deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.”

Oh, good grief, Secretary Rice, that’s exactly what we did do! We went back to Congress to deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after Hitler was overthrown! It was called the Marshall Plan. Marshall! Gen. George Catlett Marshall! Secretary of state! The job you have now! C’mon! […]

This administration has long thought otherwise, but you can’t cherry-pick life — whether life in 2007, or life in the history page marked 1945. You can’t keep the facts that fit your prejudices and throw out the ones that destroy your theories. And if you’re going to try to do that; if you still want to fool some people into thinking that Saddam was Hitler, and once we gave FDR that blank check in Germany he was no longer subject to the laws of Congress or gravity or physics, at least stop humiliating us.
Get your facts straight. Use the Google!

You’ve been on Fox News Sunday, Secretary Rice. The Fox network has got another show premiering Tuesday night. You could go on that one, too. It might be a better fit. It’s called “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?”

Rice likes to brag that she’ll return to academia after at the end of Bush’s second term. Given her propensity for embarrassing herself, it’s hard to imagine a respected university would take her.

Rice doesn’t care if her arguments make sense. She knows that’s not terribly important…

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be ‘the man in the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.
– Joseph Goebbels

  • Maybe we should stop holding Condi to a higher standard just because she has a Ph.D. and her nose in the air.

    “Considers herself something of a scholar” is exactly right. Luckily, by now nobody else does.

  • “Given her propensity for embarrassing herself, it’s hard to imagine a respected university would take her.” – Mr. CB

    All sorts of crap goes into and comes out of The Hoover Institute at Stanford. They’ll welcome her back with open arms.

    http://www.hoover.org/bios/rice.html

  • One can’t help but echo KO’s wild incredulity from last night. He caught the moment perfectly. Rice and the rest of Bush’s cohort have been lying to so many people so often that they are lying to themselves now. They’re incapable of telling the truth anymore. Of course Rice lied so much in her one statement that she inadvertently told the truth about Truman going to Congress to pass the Marshall Plan. What a precious moment in these horrid Bush years.

  • Another Rice Screw up.

    Our Troops DID leave the south after the civil war and the Govt DID cut a deal with the South in 1877 essentially ending reconstruction.

    I guess this is one of those incovenient facts Rice ignores.

    The Feds could not get the fmr confederates too live in peace with fmr slaves after our civil war.

  • Sounds like she’d be perfect for Liberty U or Patrick Henry College — they like to teach fables as fact.

  • When the Bush Admin is over, Condi would be perfect as a fact checker for Conservapedia–the online encyclopedia for deluded home schooled dummies. Apparently, they like doing hatchet jobs on inconvenient historic facts too.

  • This is a woman who publicly stated her belief that the civil rights movement was unnecessary, since the South would have “inevitably” changed its segregation laws as they realized they needed to modernize.

    I am sure back in her ancestors’ days, she’d have been the one working in Ol’ Massa’s house who informed him who the malcontents in the slave quarters were, and would tell everyone there was nothing to worry about since Ol’ Massa would free the slaves when he died.

    There’s an old term from the bad old slavery days that clearly defines what kind of person Rice is, but you can’t say it in civilized society any more.

  • Haik – I believe the book of Revelations refers to her as the Whore of Babylon.

    CB- it’s secession, not succession. Sorry, just the proof reader in me…

  • When she claimed back around 2003-04 that there was an organized Nazi resistance movement in Germany after World War II comparable to the one in Iraq, I knew she was full of shit.

  • …not a woman of Rice’s ALLEGED intellect. If this were the first demonstrably incorrect and stupid thing she’s said, she might be entitled to a little slack. Unfortunately, it’s not.

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