Rice Arrives Just In Time to Oversee U.S. Decline
The first Black female U.S. Secretary of State will inevitably preside over a general and dramatic decline in American influence in the world, a process that accelerates with each passing week. So bizarre is American behavior - so disconnected from objective facts and from international conversation and evolving human standards of conduct - that Condoleezza Rice cannot escape becoming a caricature of diplomacy.
The Bush Pirates rolled their dice in Iraq in the Spring of 2003 - and came up snake eyes. Even elements of the U.S. corporate media see the handwriting on the historical wall: utter defeat for the neo-con project in Iraq, and descent into terminal isolation for the superpower. The war is all but lost, according to a study released by Knight Ridder Newspapers on January 23:
"The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick....
"The analysis suggests that unless something dramatic changes - such as a newfound will by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large escalation of U.S. troop strength - the United States won't win the war."
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George Bush and his handmaiden, Condoleezza Rice, speak a strange language that is understood only by the denizens of the American bubble. It is a language of aggression, pure and simple - an American Manifest Destiny that threatens the sovereignty of every other nation on the planet, but pretends to be a liberating force. Bush also delivered an implicit threat to those Americans who resist involvement in his savage crusade: "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands," said Bush in his inaugural address. "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Bush men (and woman) are prepared to declare domestic opponents of his imperial policies to be threats to internal American liberties.
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