Rice Speaks; The Times Scoffs

Condoleezza Rice again shows why she's the best Secretary of State since George Shultz, in a Q&A session with New York Times writers/editors/management. On progress in the GWOT:

QUESTION: I was going to ask if you want to change to Iraq. Can you make the case that international terror, global terror, is less of a threat now than it was four years ago?

SECRETARY RICE: I can make the case that international terrorism is being confronted finally in ways it was not four years ago. And that because it is finally being confronted, we have a chance at defeating this ideology of extremism that produced the people who flew those planes into buildings four years ago yesterday.

QUESTION: If you take a snapshot right now, is the world more dangerous than it was before?

SECRETARY RICE: You know, I just don't think it's the right way to think about it. I don't think that when you are in a struggle that began really -- George Schultz dates it to '83, even if you want to date it to the rise of sort of bin Laden in the early '90s -- a struggle that began that long ago and that had become so entrenched, not just in places like Afghanistan but that, frankly, had legs in places like Pakistan, certainly had huge legs in Saudi, that was occupying territory in Afghanistan, that was occupying territory unconfronted in the northwest frontiers of Pakistan, I can make an argument to you that, yeah, we are a lot safer confronting it, although when you confronted it, it will come out after you. It's not as if they're going to sit still and just be defeated, which is why I think we see more activity on their part.

But if I look at where we were in September of 2001, where Pakistan's relationship to al-Qaida and the Taliban was actually pretty close, where the Saudis denied that they had a problem and where terrorist financing was coming out of Saudi in major ways, where Afghanistan was occupied by Usama bin Laden -- it was his country in effect, his state in effect -- where around the world there was little cognize of the integrated, networked, global nature of this threat. Yeah, it's going to take some time to break that up, but I'd much rather be where we are now than where we were with some sort of false sense of security on September 11th, which is why we were so surprised, because we were operating under a false sense of security.

QUESTION: If I could follow up on Iraq one moment. I've heard you in the past say that we just have to look at the longer term of Iraq and if you look at the short term it can seem discouraging, but the trends are positive. And I know that one of the pillars of the Administration's strategy is to try to get a constitutional process going. I think dispassionately though, looking at what happened in the interim constitutional process, you could make the case that it really deepened the divisions in Iraqi society, that right now you have different groups and different territories that are carving out different areas of the economy and a key group not having bought in to the constitution as it's been outlined right now. I know we're in the middle of the process, but that is one the one hand. The political process seems to be potentially extraordinarily divisive and accelerating, you know, the kind of forces that could tear a country apart. And you have a insurgency that really seems to remain very effective and very strategic. How can you look at Iraq and continue to feel that the trend lines are moving in the direction that you want to see?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I agree with you that the insurgency is very lethal, and in that sense effective. I don't know if I agree with you that it's strategic in the sense that if -- because I think the question is: Is the insurgency, aside from sort of intimidation of people, which is a problem, but is the insurgency gaining a foothold politically as an alternative to the political process that has been laid out? And I would say no, that it is, in fact, not; and that that, in and of itself, is an important weakness for the insurgency because then what it becomes is nihilist in its character. And you're beginning to see even in some parts of the Sunni community tribes fighting them because they don't really just want them blowing things up. You know, insurgencies that we have known in history have generally had some kind of political base. Well, the only political base that is observable there is either bring back Saddam Hussein, which is not a very popular idea, or let's have the caliphate in which Iraq will look like the 11th century, which I think is also not terribly popular.

On starting with Iraq:

SECRETARY RICE: [W]hat we encountered on [September 11th] was the violent awakening . . . a wake-up call that what we faced was a global extremist ideology that had found its footing and was networked worldwide and was going to do more of this time and time again, then you had to ask whether or not what you wanted to deal with is the root cause of that extremist ideology. And it goes right to the heart of the Middle East. That extremist ideology of hatred comes out of a Middle East where there is such a freedom deficit that the people have lost hope, that you have, you know, in 2003 22 of the economies of the region with the combined GDP of Spain, where authoritarian governments have choked off any legitimate channel for opposition and so the only manifestation of political activity has become extremism. And if you believe that you've got to change the nature of that Middle East, then you've got to also change Iraq. And Iraq becomes a --

QUESTION: And Saudi Arabia and Oman and --

SECRETARY RICE: Absolutely. You have to do this.

QUESTION: I mean, it strikes me as Saudi Arabia who would be the more likely target than Iraq under that theory.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, you absolutely have to get change in Saudi Arabia, too. But in Saudi Arabia and in Egypt and in Kuwait and in all of -- that's why we actually have a broader Middle East reform agenda where you're going to do those -- where you're going to insist on and press for exactly those kind of reforms.

In fact, I think it has three pillars. It has one pillar that says where you can -- and look, we didn't go into Iraq because we thought it was just a great place to start. We have a history. We had a history with Saddam Hussein of 12 years. But when you have an opportunity to build a different kind of state in the core of the Middle East, take it and make your goals for an Iraq actually goals that are consistent with a different kind of Middle East.

A Palestinian-Israeli peace is a part of that. It's the second pillar. And a third pillar is broad reform in the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia, where the combination of activity in Saudi against terrorists finally and pressures I think are increasing in Saudi Arabia for reform.

QUESTION: When you say that you have an opportunity, I think if I were to look back I would say this was a rather difficult one. I mean, I can imagine a few other countries where it might have started with greater ease.

SECRETARY RICE: No, but look, we were still in a state of war with Saddam Hussein.

QUESTION: You mean in that sense the sort of venal structure permitted --

SECRETARY RICE: No, what we needed to do was to deal with the threat that was there with Saddam Hussein. In that sense, you didn't go -- you didn't defeat Nazi Germany because you wanted to build a democratic Germany. You defeated Nazi Germany because it was a threat to the region. You defeated Saddam Hussein because he was a threat to the region.

But having defeated Nazi Germany, it was only the United States that insisted on a democratic Germany. Having defeated Saddam Hussein, it is the United States that is insisting on a democratic Iraq. That's the point.

On compatibility of Islam and democracy:

QUESTION: Is there something in the history of the region or the world that should make us optimistic that a country that is founded on the principle that one particular religion, and particularly this one, is the fundamental foundation for all law is going to be democratic? We haven't seen it anywhere else.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, no, but you know, it's either going to happen or we're going to have one heck of a problem in the Middle East. Right? Because there are a lot of states that are founded on the principle that Islam -- . . .

QUESTION: I mean, that is not -- do you think at the end of the day that people will be satisfied with creating an Iraq that's basically a religious state?

SECRETARY RICE: I cannot -- well, first of all, I don't think this is an Iraq that is basically a religious state. I think that's a misstatement. I think that when you look around the world there are very few countries that actually have separation of church and state. The United States is one. France is another. You might notice that Great Britain did not have separation of church and state.

QUESTION: No, but their constitution is not being --

SECRETARY RICE: They don't have a constitution.

QUESTION: But it's a country that is not based on the idea that religious law takes precedence over all over law.

SECRETARY RICE: No, that is not -- wait a minute. That's not what the Iraqi constitution says. The Iraqi constitution says that Islam will be a main source along with the democratic principles and civil law for the governance of life in Iraq. That's what it says.

QUESTION: That no law may contradict Islam.

SECRETARY RICE: No law may contradict Islam, no law may contradict democratic principles and no law may contradict the civil law. So, in fact, what they did is that they came to, again, a compromise which allows Islam to continue to play an important role because in that part of the world Islam -- the Islamic identity of those states remains important, but which mitigates the chance that it will be Islamic law by the insertion of other sources of law as the state evolves.

And you know, the fact is that if you look at the Middle East, these are constitutions that are not going to look identical to the Constitution of the United States, which did enshrine separation of church and state because we had a particular history in that way.

This is a test. You're right. Can Islam coexist with democratic principles? And I think that it can. I don't think that there's anything in Islam that says that it cannot. But we're going to have to -- or they're going to have to find models which both accommodate Islam and accommodate Islamic principles. Now, it worked in reverse but we do have one example where it seems to be working, which is Turkey, where you now have an Islamic party in power by democratic means which is, I think, developing a path where Islam and democracy are working hand in hand. But I can't tell you that this is a preordained outcome. No. But I can tell you that unless you're going to tell the entire Arab world and the entire Muslim world that they have to adopt our notion of separation of church and state, that unless -- tell them you have to adopt our notion of church and state or you can't be democratic, then this is the option that they have.

In sum, Secretary Rice held her ground against hostility possible only because the Times ignores:

• The enormous progress in Iraq,



• The possibility that Arab peoples are just as eager for, and capable of sustaining, democracy as Westerners,



• The overwhelming support for democracy and religious freedom among the Iraqi electorate,



• Why the Times itself favored making Iraq the second stop in the GWOT,



• The Administration has largely disengaged from supporting the Saudi regime, and the emergence of an Iraqi democracy will increase the impetus for reform,



• The actual text of Iraq's draft constitution which, as Secretary Rice says, does not establish a theocracy and will protect human rights and liberties far better than any Arab nation.

At least we know why Blue-state America disparages President Bush's foreign policy: today's liberals only know what they read in the biased, lying New York Times.

(via Best of the Web)