Example #2 of the Bush Agenda: Condoleezza Rice

Now she is Secretary of State, but Condi was the National Security Adviser in Bush's first term. According to the Progressive Government Institute, the NSA "is involved in all national security decisions and helps coordinate the implementation of national security policies across various government departments.

From Rice's bio on the State Department website, here is her professional experience prior to becoming National Security Adviser:

In June 1999, she completed a 6-year tenure as Stanford University 's Provost, during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As Provost she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students.

As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors -- the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions.

From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military.

An impressive resume in general, but it is missing something. While she had plenty of experience with and knowledge about Russia and Eastern Europe before the collapse of the Soviet Union, she had no experience or training whatsoever regarding the Middle East. Call me crazy, but it seems to me that in 2001, national security issues involved the Middle East much more than Soviet Russia and the old Eastern Bloc.

If I am correct, then Rice was not really equipped to be an effective NSA, and her record as NSA supports this view. Her performance regarding events related to 9-11 was weak, as shown by her testimony before the 9-11 Commission. Rice insisted there was no way to prevent or foresee the attacks on 9-11, but Richard Ben-Veniste was not convinced. He kept asking Rice about the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), and Rice kept insisting that it did not indicate that bin Laden was planning to attack the U.S. And then this happened:

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB.

MS. RICE: I believe the title was "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Rice's attempts to spin her position were bullshit in my opinion, but read the testimony for yourself. Fred Kaplan had a good summary of Rice's testimony and what it showed about her job performance in relation to 9-11:

Rice's central point this morning, especially in her opening statement, was that nobody could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. The problem, she argued, was cultural (a democratic aversion to domestic intelligence gathering) and structural (the bureaucratic schisms between the FBI and the CIA, among others). But this is the analysis of a political scientist, not a policymaker. Culture and bureaucracies form the backdrop against which officials perceive threats, devise options, and make choices. It is good that Rice, a political scientist by training, recognized that this backdrop can place blinders and constraints on decision-makers. But her job as a high-ranking decision-maker is to strip away the blinders and maneuver around the constraints. This is especially so given that she is the one decision-maker who is supposed to coordinate the views of the various agencies and present them as a coherent picture to the president of the United States. Her testimony today provides disturbing evidence that she failed at this task—failed even to understand that it was part of her job description.

(emphasis added). The Iraq war elicited an equally underwhelming effort from Rice. There is no question that the Department of Defense dominated and dictated national security policy after 9-11. It always seemed to me that Rice never did anything of any substance regarding Iraq. She just went along to get along from what I could see--and others saw the same. On October 12, 2003, the Washington Post printed an article about Rice by Glenn Kessler and Peter Slevin. The entire article is lengthy, but here is one highlight regarding Iraq:

Rice's reputation was damaged in July, when she acknowledged that she had not entirely read the most authoritative assessment of prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. She also said the White House was unaware of CIA doubts about an allegation that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, although her staff had received two CIA memos and a call from CIA Director George J. Tenet on the subject.

It's rather difficult to coordinate policy efforts when you don't read key information, don't you think? Oh, but wait, there's more:

Rice's hands-off approach is most evident in the aftermath of the war with Iraq. Administration officials felt that the postwar effort in Afghanistan -- a diverse collection of nations doing assigned tasks -- had been inefficient and ineffectual. So the Pentagon was given the primary responsibility for rebuilding Iraq.

Yet, after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his armies vanished in early April, signs quickly emerged that the Bush administration had not completely prepared for the aftermath. The early relief and reconstruction effort, assigned by Bush to the Pentagon in January, stumbled over such basics as staffing, transportation and communications. U.S. authorities sent inconsistent messages about Iraq's political future and proved unable to provide a clear vision to Iraqis or Congress of what the Bush White House intended.

"The NSC is not performing its traditional role, as adjudicator between agencies," said a State Department official, who described "a very scattershot approach to staffing and management. You never knew quite what you were supposed to be doing and with whom."

A U.S. official who served in Iraq said the NSC failed to make decisions about Iraq's postwar reconstruction and governance until long after the war ended. Decisions that some agencies thought had been settled were unexpectedly reopened or reinterpreted by the Pentagon, he said.

*******

Some of Powell's key lieutenants, who had gone along with the president's decision to give the Pentagon the principal postwar role, were frustrated first by the Defense Department's refusal to include them -- and then Rice's unwillingness to intercede.

Rice's "hand's-off approach was also examined.

But the complaints about her skills at managing foreign policy are in many ways more serious, and have not received much of a public airing.

Many officials with firsthand knowledge of White House decision making contend that Rice is weak at forging those decisions, sometimes attempting to meld incompatible approaches that later fail. She is also perceived as not resolving enough issues before they reach the president and doing a poor job of making sure his wishes are carried out.

Administration officials said the situation has left many problems unresolved, especially at lower levels, and led to frequent policy shifts. Decisions are made and then altered or reversed, and feuding advisers have been emboldened to keep pressing their case or to even ignore policy guidance in the hope of achieving final victory.

In Rice, "you've never really had a national security adviser who's ready to discipline the process, to drive decisions to conclusions and, once decisions are made, to enforce them," said one former senior NSC staff member. In particular, he said, "she will never discipline Don Rumsfeld" when he undercuts decisions that have been made. "Never any sanctions. Never any discipline. He never paid a price."

Rice is not a leader. Rice is not a decision maker. She apparently is not even a good manager. If she cannot confront or coordinate officials in her own government, what are the chances she can do any of that with the leaders of other countries? And if you think she is not supposed to do these things as Secretary of State, check out the official description of her duties.

Some insight into Rice's performance as NSA was provided by Alan Gilbert, who was one of Rice's graduate professors at the University of Denver. Commenting on her appearance before the 9-11 Commission, Gilbert wrote the following for Salon.com:

Condi has always been a great performer. As a pianist, as an ice skater, as a student, as a provost, as a presidential advisor, she has always been on stage. She adapts her performance to her audience: Josef Korbel and, to some extent, me once upon a time, President Bush now. She can be fierce. Donald Rumsfeld, who waged war in Iraq without a plan for the occupation, lost control to Condi and the National Security Council. But tragically, she is also a person without a core, who loses herself in her performance. National security was her responsibility. She failed in that responsibility because she was too busy perfecting her performance as a Bush team player when the Bush team, obsessed with wild fantasies of global domination, had lost touch with reality.

And I fear this is what we can expect from Rice in her role as Secretary of State. As Kessler and Plevin put it, "Rice has proved to be a poised and articulate defender of President Bush's policies." That's all she did as NSA, and that is one reason why she is now Secretary of State. She is now in a position to try to force those policies onto other countries, and that scares me.