Rice's Rhetoric, in Full Retreat (democracy not on top anymore)

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/21/AR2007012100526.html

Rice's Rhetoric, in Full Retreat

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, January 22, 2007; Page A19

Eleven months ago Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a joint news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit to report on their talks in Cairo. After Aboul Gheit summed up the topics, Rice pointed out that he had forgotten one: "Iran. You missed Iran." She then spent most of her time on Egypt's progress -- or lack of it -- "as it faces questions of democracy and reform."

Last week Aboul Gheit and Rice again appeared side by side, this time in the Egyptian tourist capital, Luxor. Once again each offered a summary of the talks -- which this year, unlike last, included President Hosni Mubarak. This time Iran loomed large in their discussions, as did Iraq. But it was Rice who neglected to mention something: "democracy and reform." During the course of her visit to Egypt, and her latest tour through the Middle East, the words never publicly crossed her lips.

Read what bloggers are saying about this article.


The reversal this represents is staggering -- especially to Egyptians who have closely tracked Rice's visits to their country. After all, her first notable act on moving to the State Department two years ago was to cancel a visit to Egypt in order to signal U.S. displeasure with the arrest of one of the country's leading liberal democratic politicians, Ayman Nour. Thanks in part to Rice's gesture, Nour was released and Mubarak announced a multicandidate election for president in which Nour was eligible to participate.

When Rice did get to Cairo, in June 2005, she delivered a speech at the American University that was a clarion call for democracy across the Middle East. She opened her joint news conference with Aboul Gheit by saying, "we look to the Egyptians and the Egyptian people to also take a major role in leading reform in this region." And she warned Mubarak against using fraud and thuggery to manipulate the promised elections....

continues ......good article..........

[rodeodance]

1. "But Rice and her president, it seems, have gone back to sleep."

..........Rice has made no real attempt to explain the somersault in her policy, which comes across as a feckless attempt to simplify the increasingly chaotic and dangerous situation across the region. But her latest duet with Aboul Gheit made me wonder if she still remembered that day at the American University. She took questions; one man pointed out that the United States had supported dictatorships in the Middle East for 60 years.

"Yes," conceded Rice, "there's 60 years when we didn't -- we were not outspoken about the need for democracy in this part of the world."

"Things have changed. We had a very rude awakening on September 11th, when I think we realized that our policies to try and promote what we thought was stability in the Middle East had actually allowed, underneath, a very malignant, meaning cancerous, form of extremism to grow up underneath, because people didn't have outlets for their political views." She didn't need to add that al-Qaeda was founded, in large measure, by Egyptians.

Five-and-a-half years after Sept. 11, the cancer is still growing in Egypt, and elsewhere in the "moderate mainstream." But Rice and her president, it seems, have gone back to sleep.