Bush’s and Rice’s alternative reality breaking down

I’ll start by quoting Barry Schweid’s article for the AP in which he summarizes Secretary Rice’s recent woes:

WASHINGTON (AP)—It was probably Condoleezza Rice’s unhappiest week as secretary of state, one so disappointing that it raises questions about the Bush administration’s ability to shape Middle East events in the near term.

During her three days in the region, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian leaders—with Rice standing awkwardly at their side before the news media—refused to support the U.S. financial boycott of the militant group Hamas as it takes control of the Palestinian parliament.

In Iraq, sectarian violence threatened to turn into a civil war, setting back efforts by President Bush and Rice to construct a democratic government that would shine as an example for the entire area.

And a deal with the United Arab Emirates, one of America’s few close Arab friends, to operate some terminals at six major U.S. ports unexpectedly ignited bipartisan anger in Congress and forced at least a delay of the transaction.

Each instance not only illustrated the chasm between the United States and the Arab world but seemed to widen it.

As we look at Rice’ numerous problem areas,—the Hamas election; the refusal of Arab governments to join America’s financial boycott of Hamas; sectarian violence in Iraq; and the uproar in the U.S. over the UAE ports deal—is there a common element running through them?

Yes, there is. It is the crashing into reality of the Bush/neoconservative/liberal dogma which says that all people are like us and that differences don’t matter.

Thus: For us, democracy is compatible with civilized norms of conduct, therefore it should also be so for the Palestinians. But it’s not.

Thus: We believe that an organization devoted to waging terror war to destroy a sovereign nation is a bad thing that should be shunned, therefore Arab potentates should believe it too. But they don’t.

Thus: In America we don’t need a dictator to keep different religious denominations from killing each other and blowing up each other’s churches, therefore the Iraqis shouldn’t need one either. But they do.

And thus: “We”—meaning Bush and Rice and their fellow globalist elites—take it as a matter of course that Arabs are just as safe a bet for handling U.S. ports as any other national group, and therefore all Americans should feel the same. But they don’t.

With that last example, the pattern I thought I had found changes in an interesting way. It’s not that non-Americans turn out to be different from Americans, it’s that most Americans, and most of the human race, are different from Bush and Rice and the elites that support them. When it comes to the false, extreme, and destructive idea that humanity consists of a mass of interchangeable units sharing the same desires for freedom and democracy, there is only one group in the world that truly believes it—our rulers. So rigid is their faith in this false vision of humanity that even when it comes crashing down around them, as recounted in the above article, they can’t see it. Like ideological zombies, they keep smugly repeating the same formulae.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 25, 2006 09:00 PM | Send