Buencamino does foreign affairs analysis for Action for Economic Reforms. This article was published in newspaper Today, 24 November 2004 edition, p. 11.
CONDOLEEZA RICE’S first name comes from con dolcezza, meaning to play(a musical piece) with sweetness. Her mother was a music teacher.
In 2002, Denise Hawkins, writing for Christianity Today, painted a flattering portrait of Ms. Rice. The article was meant to lay to rest any lingering reservations the periodical’s white Christian readers might have about a black woman advising the president on matters of national security.
The first thing Hawkins did was to establish Rice’s religious credentials. She quoted Rice on her relationship with God, “When I’m concerned about something, I figure out a plan of action, and then I give it to God. I just ask it to be carried through. God’s never failed me yet.”
After showing the faithful that God acted on memos from Rice, she turned to the lady’s less exalted childhood and related her unforgettable incident with racism as a seven-year-old black child in Birmingham, Alabama.
Hawkins wrote, “In 1961, Angelina Rice [Condoleeza’s mother] and her seven-year-old daughter were eyeing pretty dresses at a Birmingham department store, when a white saleswoman blocked Condi from trying on an outfit in the fitting room, which she said was reserved for white customers. The clerk directed them to a storage room designated for blacks. But Mrs. Rice was having none of that. She coolly informed the saleswoman that her daughter would change in the fitting room or that she would take her money, and the saleswoman’s prospective commission, to another store. Taken aback by the challenge, the clerk ushered them into a remote dressing room and stood guard at the door hoping no one would notice. It is a moment Rice will never forget.”
So Condi came from a family of good Negroes. Mrs. Rice addressed racism properly, without creating a scene, unlike Rosa Parks who sat at the front of the bus and started a revolution that, to this day, upsets somany nice white folks.
Rice said, “My father was not a march-in-the-street protester,” he believed in fighting racial injustice “with your mind.”
Condi told Hawkins how her parents raised her to be a smart Negro. Shesaid, “My parents were very strategic. I was going to be so well-prepared and I was going to do all of these things that were revered in white society so well that I would be armored somehow from racism. I would be able to confront white society on its own terms.”
Thus the master plan was to succeed in life not as a black person but as someone who was white in everything but skin color. The right way was to “confront white society on its own terms” not “on black terms.”
When she spoke at the 2000 Republican convention, Rice proclaimed, “My father was a Republican!”
However, Rice omitted a few details about her father, John Rice. Laura Flanders, author of Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species”, says John Rice supported Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, became “the first administrator of Headstart, an educational affirmative action program that Bush is trying to kill”, and “as assistant dean of artsand sciences in the University of Denver in the [19}70’s initiated aseminar series on the black experience in America that brought speakersto talk about white supremacy as a structural problem in the US and itscontinuing legacy.” Among the invited speakers were an exiled poet fromthe apartheid regime of South Africa and one Louis Farrakhan of theNation of Islam.
At age 15 Rice went to the University of Denver to study music. Shesoon realized that being just a “pretty good” pianist was not going toget her beyond “teaching 13-year-olds to murder Beethoven for a living.”
Fortuitously, she met Joseph Korbel, a former Czech diplomat and fatherof Clinton’s Secretary of State Margaret Albright, who happened to belecturing at the same university. Korbel impressed Rice so much, sheleft music to major in Russian and Eastern European studies. It was achange that would lead Rice from a bleak future teaching 13-year-oldsto murder Beethoven, to a more rewarding career of “sending 18-year-olds to murder Iraqis.”{mospagebreak}During the Clinton presidency, Rice joined Chevron as a board member.At that time, Chevron, which was pumping oil in the Niger Delta,enjoyed cozy relations with that country’s brutal dictatorship. Whenlocals mounted a series of protests against Chevron “regarding jobs,clean water and access to health care,” the dictatorship answered theprotesters’ demands by mowing them down.
As a result, Chevron shareholders asked the company to review itsrelations with the dictatorship. Flanders notes, “Rice was on thesocial policy committee of theboard that received these resolutions and in every case, rejectedsending them to the full board for consideration.”
Rice’s apathy to the plight of her fellow blacks recalls columnistFrederick Hudson’s comparison of Rice to the black maid in Guess Who’sComing toDinner who says to Sidney Poitier, “I’m not going to put up with any black power mess in ‘this house’.”
In 1984, Rice wrote a book called, The Soviet Union and theCzechoslovak Army, 1948-1983, Uncertain Alliance. Joseph Kalvoda, aprofessor from St. Joseph’s College in Connecticut, reviewed the book.
He said, “Rice’s generalizations reflect lack of knowledge abouthistory and the nationality problem in Czechoslovakia.” He pointed outglaring factual errors in her book. For example, in the opening pagesof her book, Rice said, “In 1939 and 1948, the Czechoslovak president,Edward Benes, ordered his troops to barracks, Dubceck and Svoboda werethen just following precedent. Czechoslovak passivity meant thedecision of 1968 was preordained.”
Kolvoda said, “Rice claims that Czechoslovaks are supposedly passiveand consider resistance to invading forces unnecessary and dangerous,preferring instead, the political solution
He points out,”In 1939, Benes was no longer president but was teachingat the University of Chicago.” And he adds, “First, there are Czechsand Slovaks but not Czechoslovaks. Second, history shows Czechsresisted Prussian invading forces in 1866, Russia, France and Italy. In1939 and 1948…resisted the invading armies of Bela Kan.”
Rice also compared Poland in 1981 to Czechoslovakia in 1968 andKalvoda’s reaction to that was, “Rice does not mention theobvious—Soviet troops have been garrisoned in Poland since the end ofWorld War 2 so an invasion was unnecessary— whereas the 1968 invasionof Czechoslovakia was to force Dubcek’s regime to accept the stationingof Soviet troops.”
Kalvoda concludes, “Much of this book by Condoleeza Rice is based onsecondary work. Rice’s selection of sources raises questions since shefrequently does not sift fact from propaganda and valid informationfrom disinformation or misinformation.”
For some reason, Brent Scowcroft, Poppy Bush’s national securityadviser, was impressed by Rice’s scholarship. He hired her to work inthe National Security Council (NSC), first as director, then as seniordirector of Soviet and East European Affairs. She was, at the sametime, Special Assistant to the president for national security affairs.
At his first summit with Gorbachev in Malta, Poppy Bush introduced Riceas the woman “who tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union.”Indeed.
Poppy Bush missed the boat on the break-up of the Soviet Union and gotoff on the wrong foot with Yeltsin because Rice advised him to “supportGorbachev and his vision of a reformed Soviet Union.”
Flanders relates an incident when Rice “physically blocked the door tothe Oval Office to prevent Yeltsin from meeting with the President” anda speech where Bush “urged the people of Ukraine to remain loyal toMoscow” instead of pushing for their independence. An NSC stafferadmitted, “She was wrong but she was loyal.”
During the Iran-Iraq war, the NSC came under fire from the UnitedStates Congress for “skewing intelligence to mislead Congress intopermitting arms sales and loans to Saddam.” Access to anthrax andbotulinium toxins were only blocked after Saddam invaded Kuwait.
When Junior hired Condoleeza, he said, “America will find that she is a wise person. I trust her judgment.”
The younger Bush, following daddy’s footsteps, also entrusted Rice withskewing intelligence about Iraq. This time, however, it was to misleadCongress into supporting an attack on the very same man she misledCongress to arm many years ago.
Her performance pre- and post- 911, the lies and the resulting fiasco in Iraq are all too fresh to bear repeating.
People wonder how Rice survived her blunder about the Soviet Union andmanaged to gain Junior’s trust and eventual promotion to Secretary ofState despite her dismal performance as national security adviser.Well, the Bushes value loyalty above all.
In summing up Rice, Flanders said, “Don’t judge Rice too harshly. Thenational security adviser’s expertise has never been serving thenation, it has been serving the house of Bush. At the first job, shehas been a disaster. At the second she is the best.”
Good luck, mankind!
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