By Susan

This is what former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice explained about Iran when she recently appeared on an episode of PBS’s Charlie Rose. Rice questioned the productivity of talking with a country that arms terrorists and is gathering enough Uranium to produce a bomb. Rice said it was necessary to establish some common ground before sitting down with the country - like getting them to agree to stop providing weaons for militias targeting American allies in Lebanon and so forth. European countries tried the “let’s sit down and talk” tactic, Rice argued, before eventually abandoning discussion when no gains were made. The looming threat of Iran is something I try to ignore as a general policy because it scares the crap out of me, but I had wondered why diplomacy wasn’t viewed as a better option. 

Rose is a rather unapologetic liberal and I was curious about how he would deal with Rice, one of the members of George W’s inner sanctum. He was gracious and conversational as always and was only argumenative about the Iran issue and I felt that was tempered. After listening to Rice for an hour, I think it would be difficult to be anything but relatively polite in the presence of what appeared to be a gracious intellectual. She was fairly forthright about the rationalizations and consequences of the Bush presidency, arguing that the search for bin Laden was never put on the back burner in favor of eliminating Saddam Hussein, as some would allege. She reiterated the necessity of removing Saddam because of the damage he was doing his own people and the failure of any sanctions to personally impact him.

Chasing bin Laden through the mountainous regions of Afghanistan was nearly impossible, she said, and there was also value in removing his field generals - two of which were coerced, some would argue tortured, into giving up information that she said saved American lives.

 Much of this was likely the party line but it was hard to doubt the sincerity of Rice’s sentiments and it was eye-opening to realize the depth of her charisma and intelligence. It definitely put a different spin on Rice than you would see on perhaps Lil’ Bush. History is a long tale, she said, and it would judge her former boss’s administration differently than the daily headlines.

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