"We’ll never know if she could have stopped W. from ruining his presidency and destroying so many lives when there was no national security stake.
We only know that when you sell your soul, it’s not like a pawnshop. Condi thought she could reclaim it after she was secretary of state and bring W. back to the light of diplomacy and common sense. But, as Russell Baker once noted, she was trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, spinning her wheels in the second term trying to undo the disasters of the first.
What a wonderful lesson she could have taught those graduates about the perils of succeeding at any cost, about how moral shortcuts never lead to the right place."
"The perils of succeeding at any cost"? Well, Dowd could also have said several words about Samantha Power, author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," who currently serves as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, but who has refrained from criticism of American inaction involving genocide in Syria.
And then there is also Susan Rice, who took to the airwaves in order to hawk Obama's false narrative concerning the attack on the Benghazi consulate, i.e. it was all the fault of the Internet video.
Moral shortcuts never lead to the right place? Never say never. Susan Rice was subsequently promoted by Obama to United States National Security Advisor.
Hillary Clinton? Was there ever a soul to sell, or just vacuous self-interest homing in on the White House? Damn Bill's libido, full speed ahead!
Where does any of it lead? I don't know. Meanwhile, however, we are forced to live within our own skins, or, with regard to many aspiring political types, within their own scales.
What an *excellent* point regarding Power! I've read a couple of other people making the same point -- but far far fewer people than had she been a Republican in a Republican administration. Then, we'd have heard no end of her "turncoat ways," or her "obfuscated lens on morality," or "talk (& writing) is cheap" problem.
ReplyDeleteI mean, how does one take her seriously now -- what "conviction" do I believe she has at this point if, at *minimum* she didn't and hasn't resigned due to the continuing "genocide" of the Syrian people?
G-d forbid she was Jewish, she'd never have heard the end of it!