Is Condoleezza Rice Legitimizing Iran?

phoenix80

phoenix80

Banned
Is Condoleezza Rice Legitimizing Iran?

Joel C Pousson - 4/27/2007
American soldiers fighting in the Global War on Terror may have thought that support for their mission among Democrat Party operatives on Capitol Hill was, at most, lukewarm. Now, the men and women fighting every day in Iraq have another Washingtonian insider to regard with wary eyes, and her name is Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State.

The UK's Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3f96545e-f0f9-11db-838b-000b5df10621.html) reports that Madame Secretary Rice has issued an open invitation to the very government that has fed, supplied and financed the Iraqi insurgency to sit down at the diplomatic table and make recommendations to bring stability to Iraq.

With language straight out of the milquetoast "Iraq Study Group" recommendations (http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/iraq_study_group_report.pdf), Madame Secretary Rice issued an open diplomatic invitation to legitimize the terror-sponsor Iran. Now the Mullahs are asked to join the discussion on the pacification of Iraq.

One may ask what recommendations Ahmadinejad's representatives may offer at this meeting; perhaps a full and complete retreat by US forces in the Global War on Terror, a revocation of our duty to the Iraqi people struggling to establish their representative republic, and capitulation to the Iranian-directed insurgency in Iraq. Iran's involvement in supplying weapons killing Coalition troops in Iraq is obvious (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2866573&page=1). Now, per the US State Department, Iraqis are to ask advice on how to make their lives better from the sponsors of the insurgency.

Moderate Muslims who have fought and to stabilize the situation in Iraq along with the Coalition, facing IEDs and insurgencies directed right from Tehran, are now to understand that the US State Department finds it far too inconvenient to fight the terrorism of the Mullahs.

This new policy from State is in direct opposition to President Bush's stated goals to confront the Axis of Evil in his State of the Union speech of January, 2002. Although President Bush stated clearly that:

"Our nation will continue to be steadfast and patient and persistent…we will shut down terrorist camps, disrupt terrorist plans, and bring terrorists to justice….we must prevent the terrorists and regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons from threatening the United States and the world."

The US has done nothing to confront Iran's unapologetic support for terrorism. Iran has established terror training camps and conducted terrorism planning and attacks against the US and allies (http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5956) and has used its own corrupt justice system to absolve domestic terrorists of guilt in attacks on its own people (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6557679.stm).

The President also stated in that State of the Union speech that "…some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will…[a]ll nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security."

However, Iran and its handmaiden, Syria, have boldly conducted terror training and operations without a single American reprisal (http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20070219-102043-1711r.htm). Even in the face of Iran's blatant involvement in terrorism and attacks on US troops in Iraq, the State Department has responded, not by calling for regime change in Iran or supporting resistance groups there, but praising Iran as a partner in the Middle East and a legitimate power broker.

Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary for Political Affairs, asked the Iranian to work with the US to resolve the situation in Iraq, ignoring Iranian culpability: "I would say that the focus of our efforts should be on the following: to try to convince the Iranian government to play a more productive role, a more positive role to enforce civility in Iraq itself." (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070413/pl_afp/irannuclearpoliticsus_070413143611)

The President had a different take:

"America will take the side of brave men and women who advocate these values around the world, including the Islamic world, because we have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment. We seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror."
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html]

However, the careerists at State do not approve of the War on Terror. They cannot be bothered with continuing the march of freedom. It is far more important to implement the recommendations of politicians Lee Hamilton and James Baker III, such as the diplomatic initiatives towards the terror sponsoring government of Iran.

The sacrifices of over three thousand US families are to be ignored in the spirit of "diplomatic pragmatism" enshrined in the State Department. US military commanders should be livid at this appeasement of the main enemy in the Middle East, a nation not only pursuing the slaughter of innocents in support of political goals, but is rushing to develop nuclear weapons it will use the moment the first operational warhead is produced.

The President stated clearly in that State of the Union address that "…f we stop now, leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked, our sense of security would be false and temporary. History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight."

Sadly for the Iranian people, the US State Department simply was not listening.

http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=2704&cid=1&sid=27
 
Did Condoleezza Rice Try to Make a Secret Deal With the Mullahs?

April 25, 2007
National Review Online
Michael Ledeen

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose tenure at Foggy Bottom began with such energy and fine language about support for freedom in the Middle East, is begging the Iranian foreign minister to come to a “future of Iraq” conference in Egypt next week. She told the Financial Times that it would be a “missed opportunity” if Minister Mottaki didn’t show up.

In the same interview, she denied ever thinking about regime change in Iran. Our Iran policy, according to the secretary, is to “have a change in regime behavior.” Some day she will perhaps explain how any rational person can believe this cast of characters capable of changing behavior that has been constant for 28 years.

We are back to the days when Madeleine Albright went to international meetings hoping to get a one-on-one with an Iranian minister so she could apologize for past American sins and get on with the glorious business of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs. When that didn’t work, President Clinton did the public apology, and his administration trotted out a number of unilateral concessions. His vice president even made a secret deal with the Russians permitting them to sell weapons and supply expertise for the Iranian nuclear program. All for naught; the mullahs spat in our face and continued as before.

The delusion that one can settle our little disagreements with the Islamic Republic, if only the right people sit around the right conference table, has seized every administration since Jimmy Carter. Every president has sent emissaries to talk, and every administration has made demarches to Tehran. To date, the net result is hundreds of dead Americans. And yet the delusion persists. Each time it fails, the deep thinkers at Foggy Bottom manage to convince the secretary of State of the moment that we are just one small concession away from success, and by and large the secretary goes for it, just as Secretary Rice has.

That is part of the background to her public pleading for talks with the mullahs. The other part has to do with the release of the British sailors and marines from captivity in Tehran. It was obvious to anyone familiar with the methods of the Islamic Republic that the British hostages were ransomed; the only question was the dimension of the payoff to Iran. Part of the answer emerged almost immediately, when an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps magically appeared safe and sound somewhere in Iraq, and hotfooted it back home. Within hours, Iraqi officials were publicly hinting that the incarceration of the “Irbil 5” — more top IRGC intel officers captured by American forces, along with extensive documentation of their murderous activities in Iraq — would likely end quite soon. Why were they saying that?


The answer may be found between the lines of a story written shortly afterwards by one of Secretary Rice’s favorite journalists, Robin Wright of the Washington Post. It didn’t attract nearly the attention it deserved, perhaps because it was printed on Saturday, April 14 (full marks to Allahpundit over at Hot Air for spotting it). Here is what Robin Wright said:
After intense internal debate, the Bush administration has decided to hold on to five Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents (sic) captured in Iraq, overruling a State Department recommendation to release them, according to U.S. officials.​
I’ve been told that “intense internal debate” is exactly right — it was one of the most contentious debates in quite a while. Wright reports that Vice President Cheney led the charge against Rice’s position, and I am told that Secretary of Defense Gates was equally adamant. This is reinforced by a statement by General Petraeus, to the effect that we intended to keep them and keep interrogating them as long as we had food and they had things to say. Moreover, I am told that the intensity of the debate was due to the fact that Rice was not merely recommending the release of the Iranians, but had informed the mullahs that we would release them.

That makes sense to me, because that promise — if indeed it was made — would help explain the release of the Brits. It would constitute the kind of swap the Iranians like to make, and it would have been a significant triumph for the mullahs: They had lost some of their key players in Iraq, and we would have paid them off as a favor to our British pals. Tony Blair would be able to claim straight-faced that he had made no concessions, and Condoleezza Rice would be able to claim, as she has of late in private conversation, that the Iranians had backed off.

You can be quite sure that the back-channel traffic between Washington and Tehran is full of new promises, if only the Iranians will come to Egypt and sit down with us. That would enable the secretary of State to save face when she makes her next concession. After all, we’re talking, aren’t we?

It’s too clever by half, and has obviously confused the president, who, in an interview with Charlie Rose, said we wouldn’t talk to them, but then again, perhaps we would (and Allahpundit spotted it again):

"What I'm not willing to do is sit down bilaterally with the Iranians," he told PBS' "The Charlie Rose Show."​


Later, he said Rice and Iran's foreign minister might have bilateral conversations at the conference. "They could. They could," Bush said.​
President Ahmadinejad was quick to pounce on the confusion. Never mind the talks in Egypt; he pronounced himself ready to meet with Bush, and with journalists in the room.

It’s worse than too clever. It’s retreat and appeasement, and the Iranians know it. It flows from denial that the mullahs are at war with us, and lapses into the belief that this war can be resolved by the tried and failed methods of traditional diplomacy. It won’t work, as our soldiers know full well. Surge or no surge, Iraq cannot have decent security unless it is protected against the Iranians and their Syrian puppets bordering the other side of the country. The Irbil 5 know a whole lot about Iranian/Syrian activities, and hence about the terror network in Iraq — in fact, they ran it — and that knowledge can help us and the Iraqis. The very idea that those intelligence officers should be sprung is a slap in the face to every coalition soldier, and Gates and Cheney were quite right to fight it.

A small victory, to be sure. But it’s a lot better than it would have been if the secretary of State had had her way. Years from now she may be grateful for it.

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I personally believe that Condy is doing a fine job. I think shes an outstanding public speaker and I think she shows a lot of courage in dealing with Iran (knowing how the middle east treats females). Her theology in dealing with an idea change within the Iranian regime is a lot more logical than a fullscale regime change. How could the United States, after what shes already gone through, create a regime change in Iran? How, financially and militarily, perhaps more importantly socially, could this be done? Finally, how would that hurt the American foreign image? A change of ideas is perhaps all that can be done, short of a full scale military intervention. I believe Condy has exhausted all of her rational options, and her invite to Iran in regards to helping create a stronger, more economically stable Iraq is a step in the right direction. I believe that by showing Iran we value their opinions, an objective they've craved for decades, they'll be more agreeable to UN talks over their nuclear facilities.
 
Quite the contrary, I read both of your posts. I understand where you are coming from Phoenix and you make some interesting points that deserve further discussion, but I maintain that Condy is doing what she can, with what she has to work with. I personally believe that she knows that regardless of what her policy with Iran will be, she will receive flak and criticism for it, so, much like voting, she chooses the lesser of the two evils. Her dynamic position on Iran is anything but weak, which is exactly how it needs to be in my opinion. Iran is craving international attention, and uses this nuclear debate, and their little kidnapping stunt to get it. Condy has to find that line between giving Iran too much attention, and not enough. She has to be tough with Iran because like we agreed on, a change of ideas within the Iranian regime would not be easy.
 
lets cross our fingers that she is just doing this to save face and things are going well behind the scenes to change the iranian regime.
 
I absolutely do not agree that shes a liberal at heart, but well save that for another forum :wink:.
 
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