{"id":10047,"date":"2007-02-27T09:40:12","date_gmt":"2007-02-27T14:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10047.html"},"modified":"2007-02-27T09:40:12","modified_gmt":"2007-02-27T14:40:12","slug":"note-to-rice-stay-away-from-the-historical-analogies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/note-to-rice-stay-away-from-the-historical-analogies\/","title":{"rendered":"Note to Rice: stay away from the historical analogies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“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?'”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This poor woman clearly has no idea what she’s talking about.
\n
\nKeith Olbermann delved into this<\/a> in one of his special comments last night. (TP<\/a> and C&L<\/a> have video clips)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

…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.”<\/p>\n

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! […]<\/p>\n

This administration has long thought otherwise, but you can’t cherry-pick life \u2014 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.
\nGet your facts straight. Use the Google!<\/p>\n

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?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}