It's the F*cking Hypocrisy!
To wit:http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2006/Jan/18-52798.html New Challenges Call for New Diplomatic Strategies, Rice Says
Transformational diplomacy promotes democracy through partnershipsSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice
(Photo) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks at Georgetown University in Washington, Jan. 18. (©AP/WWP)
By Rebecca Ford Mitchell
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – A more integrated world with global threats -- terrorism, weapons proliferation, diseases, and trafficking in persons and drugs -- requires new diplomatic strategies, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Speaking at Georgetown University in Washington January 18, Rice said the United States is now engaged in transformational diplomacy, which means working with foreign citizens to help them “build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system.”
“Let me be clear,” she added. “Transformational diplomacy is rooted in partnership, not in paternalism; in doing things with people, not for them.”
Rice said today’s diplomatic challenges, such as encouraging democracy to the Middle East, are difficult, but that America has met formidable challenges in the past.
“In 1946 and 1947, Germans were still starving in Europe. In 1946, Communists won big minorities in Italy and in France. In 1947, there was civil war in Greece; there was civil conflict in Turkey. In 1948, Czechoslovakia fell to a Communist coup; Germany was permanently divided in Berlin. And, in 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule, and the Chinese Communists won. This wasn't just a kind of minor setback for democracy, these were huge strategic setbacks,” she said.
Now, however, Europe is whole, prosperous and at peace, Rice said, because of the U.S. commitment to democratic values.
In Iraq, she said, “It's difficult for people who have solved their differences, their entire existence by fighting and by coercion and by repression and by violence, it's really hard for them to find a way to resolve their differences by politics instead, and by compromise. It's really hard in Afghanistan, where you still have terrorists who will blow up innocent children at a moment's notice. It's really hard to go to a place like Jordan and see this hotel where this wedding party, of all things, was blown up by a suicide bomber.
They should use AC-130 gunships to blow up wedding parties, the way civilized people do. :grr:
It's hard to see the difficulties that the Palestinian people live with every day. It's really hard. But it's been hard before for countries that made it.”
We have seen the alternative to democracy, she said, in Afghanistan under Taliban-rule where al-Qaida freely operated and in the Darfur region of Sudan. (See Rebuilding Afghanistan and Darfur Humanitarian Emergency.)
“Democracy is hard and democracy takes time,” she said, “but democracy is always worth it.”
Democracy. (a registered trademark of Diebold, Inc. all rights reserved)
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