When in January 2001 President Bush named Condoleezza Rice to be his
national security adviser, media reports described her as very smart
and poised, an experienced administrator (as provost of Stanford University),
and an expert on Russia. In a comment she made during the Bush election
campaign, she admitted that she felt "pressed to understand parts
of the world that have not been part of my scope." In her first
months on the job, she focused on America's evolving relations with
Russia and China and, most of all, on the fulfillment of Mr. Bush's
promise to give America a fail-safe anti-missile missile defense system.
In February 2001, C. I. A. chief George Tenet alerted Congress that
terrorism was threatening the United States more than any other hostile
force. Four months later, however, when Ms. Rice outlined "Foreign
Policy Priorities and Challenges of the Administration," she did
not mention al Qaida at all. Yet, to make her case for an anti-missile
missile defense, she conjured up a missile threat from North Korea.
One wonders to what extent Ms. Rice has been exerting influence upon
the President's worldview and foreign policy directions, or whether
she merely executed his wishes. He has repeatedly indicated that he
thinks very highly of her as an intelligent, self-confident adviser
and trusted family friend.
Very much in line with the President's neo-conservative advisers, notably
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, Ms. Rice became the chief spokesperson
for their demands that America withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, spurn global bans on nuclear testing and germ warfare, and reject
world-wide controls of greenhouse gases. On CBS's "Face the Nation,
she insisted that "This is going to be an engaged internationalist
administration but it will not be an administration that signs on to
treaties that are not in America's interest."
For September 11, 2001, Miss Rice had scheduled another speech about
the need for anti-missile missile defense, but al Qaida's suicide bombers
impressed upon the American people that terrorism was indeed the biggest
threat to their security. Now there was a clear priority for the Administration:
Bin Laden's terrorists had to be hunted down and incapacitated, in their
hideouts in Afghanistan and everywhere else.
Gradually, however, Mr. Bush and his neo-conservative advisers, including
Ms. Rice, convinced themselves that the elimination of Saddam Hussein's
regime in Iraq was the most urgent next move, even though C. I. A. could
not detect an "imminent threat" from Iraq, and even though
remnants of the Taliban and al Qaida were still operating in Afghanistan.
Ms. Rice was infuriated when France, Germany, and Russia refused to
participate in an invasion of Iraq, as the first step toward reforming
the whole Middle East along lines often suggested by both the White
House and Israel's Likud leaders.
If Ms. Rice had ever studied the mentality of Muslim peoples in general
and Arabs in particular, she would have warned the President that more
military and social interference by non-Muslims in Muslim societies
was bound to arouse unpredictable resistance and hostility. Time and
again, statements and actions of Bush administration operatives needlessly
insulted, angered, and infuriated Muslims. Ms. Rice has yet to understand
how much the policies she shaped or condoned caused the ongoing bloody
Muslim resistance that America's young soldiers are now called upon
to break.
When Ms. Rice visited Israel in 2000, she told the newspaper Yediot
Aharonot: "I have a deep affinity with Israel." Like many
Americans, I share the empathy for the homecoming of Jewish people in
the land of their forefathers.
What is missing, however, in Ms. Rice's sense of justice is the understanding
that we Americans cannot condone Israeli schemes that transform the
homecoming for one people into the home-wrecking for another. Nobody
ought to have a better understanding for the plight of the Palestinian
people than an African-American woman who remembers the injustices she
endured as a child in Birmingham, Alabama, the city Martin Luther King
described as "probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the
United States."
My advice to Ms. Rice: Meet the Muslims where they live, see their plight
first hand, and listen to their grievances. For the President's national
security adviser, a doctorate in international relations is no substitute
for lack of informed understanding.