Germany’s Deutche Welle reported Sunday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is entering the Middle East arena with “few friends for company,” and described the United States as “increasingly estranged from European and Arab allies” over the Israel-Lebanon crisis.

Under the fold: where in the world is Condi Rice, and why?

On Friday, Rice said, “I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and starting shuttling around and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do.”

It’s not clear what she’s going to do now.  European and Arab nations are increasingly calling for an immediate ceasefire, which the Bush administration is dead set against.  Even our British lap dog balks at playing ball with us, criticizing both Israel’s tactics and America’s intransigence.  

Rice won’t be “shuttling,” per se.  In fact, the won’t actually be entering the “Middle East arena.”  She’ll be setting up a regal residence in Rome, largely because our Arab “allies” balked at hosting her visit.  She’s scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas on Monday.  On Wednesday, Condi will entertain Europeans, UN officials and Arabs, all of whom are “dismayed” by the U.S. strategy.  There’s no word what she has planned for Tuesday.  Maybe she’ll go shopping for a nice pair of Italian pumps.

She won’t be talking to anyone from Syria, Iran or Hezbollah.  That’s par for the course in Bush diplomacy, which Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) accurately described Sunday on CNN’s Late Edition as “juvenile” because we refuse to talk to people we don’t like.

War + War = Peace?

Rice will reject pleas for America to demand an immediate ceasefire because she says that will lead to a “false promise,” one sure to foment future conflicts. This attitude sums up the false promise of the neoconservative philosophy–that war produces peace, an assertion that flies in the face of the entire history of humanity.  War only produces more war.  The only thing that produces peace is, um, lack of war.  You’d think that having been a professor of political science at Stanford University, Condi might be aware of that tidbit of knowledge.  Maybe she forgot about it, what with the busy schedule she’s been keeping since she started hitting the gym every day with young Mister Bush.

Early rhetoric exhorted the Israelis to “remove” Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.  One has to ask where these “removal” proponents were suggesting Hezbollah be “removed” to.  Historically, removals of peoples and groups in the Middle East have only removed the problem to a different location.  

The truth be told, “remove” is a politically correct euphemism for “annihilate.”  And it’s as plain as the thousand-yard stare she exhibits whenever she talks in front of a camera that Condi’s delaying strategy is designed to give the Israelis time to do just exactly that to Hezbollah.  

To annihilate Hezbollah will take a heck of a lot more than a couple weeks of aerial bombing and ground combat by the Israelis.  It will take killing every man, woman and child who ever is, or ever was, or might conceivably ever be a member, supporter or sympathizer of Hezbollah.  And the more America and its proxies try to achieve that goal, the more members, supporters and sympathizers of Hezbollah it will create.  It will also serve as a better recruiting program for al Qaeda and every other anti-western radical Islamic group than they themselves ever could have created on their own.  

As Condi gads about Rome not really talking to anybody and shopping for shiny shoes, she’ll be setting a course for a global genocide so massive as to make the holocaust seem like a rush hour fender bender.

As political scientists go, I’ll take songwriter Randy Newman over Condi Rice every time.  

I get Randy Newman’s joke about dropping “the big one” on everybody.  I get the sick feeling that Condi and her Dutch uncles in the Bush administration take him seriously.

Afterbrow

Bravo Zulu to the U.S. sailors and Marines who evacuated (and continue to evacuate) U.S. citizens from Lebanon.  Carry the hell on, shipmates!

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.