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Rice's Rhetoric, in Full Retreat

[Washington Post] Jackson Diehl - 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 Iran loomed large in their discussions, as did Iraq. But it was Rice who neglected to mention something: "democracy and reform." The reversal this represents is staggering. In Rice's new parlance, Egypt has suddenly become part of a "moderate mainstream" in the Middle East, which she hopes will stand with the U.S. and Israel against the "extremists" - Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. "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," said Rice. 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."
2007-01-22 01:00:00
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