The most significant development from Rice's swing through the region was that she took personal ownership of the bloody, escalating war between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas with a single breathtaking pronouncement:
"It is time for a new Middle East. It is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail, they will not."
...It's the "new Middle East" part, which she repeated at every opportunity, that makes this Condi's war and that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of the region.
What secretary of state hasn't dreamed of a new Middle East where peaceful, democratic nations live in harmony? They all have, I suspect, but any utopian fantasies they might have entertained inevitably ran smack into dystopian realities.
...in her first real test as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice will be judged on more than her impressive résumé, her obvious intelligence, her poise on the world stage and her fashion sense. Now she has her own war to sort out, and all she's done so far is scare people with her talk of somehow making the world's tinderbox into something "new."
She should remember the famous dictum from philosopher Rumsfeld, which I paraphrase: You go to war with the Middle East you have, not the Middle East you might want.
Rice Soul: The Gay Conservative Liberal thinks the Secretary of State has sold her soul to the devil...the result being we're all headed to hell in a handbasket.
Ain't that the truth!
