On Investments and Disconnection

I held back on this for a few days, but Billmon (good to have him back blogging again) is dead right about Condi Rice and her ridiculous quote that Iraq "is worth the investment."

I once made the analogy that in the imperialism business troops equal money, so perhaps I'm not in the best position to criticize. But I was trying to sound cruel and heartless for sarcastic effect, while Condi appears to have been utterly sincere -- every bit as sincere as when she described Israel's air assault on Lebanon as the "birth pangs" of the new Middle East. (How's the baby doing, Condi?)

Maybe the simplest explanation is also the most accurate. Maybe Condi is just a cold, heartless bitch -- as morally numb and sociopathic as her office husband. But these kinds of comments could also simply reflect the incredibly sheltered life Madame Supertanker appears to have led, especially since she entered the pampered, intersecting worlds of the academic, national security and corporate elites [...]

Does Condi understand how many deaths, mutilations and wrecked lives lie behind her "investments" and "birth pangs"? Undoubtedly. Does she care? I don't know. But, from a public diplomacy point of view, it would behoove her to show some sign that she has an emotional connection to the rest of the human race -- or, if she doesn't, to at least pretend that she does.

These are the words of someone who doesn't exist on a human level. To talk in those kinds of abstractions - without care or concern for the flesh and blood behind them - just reveals so much about the poverty of character inherent in this Secretary of State. And later on that week, she built on this image with yet another sickening quote:

In a long interview with the Washington Post Rice notes, "The old Middle East was not going to stay. Let's stop mourning the old Middle East. It was not so great and it was not going to survive anyway."

The condescension and arrogance at work here is stunning. In one sweeping stroke, Rice dismisses the tens of thousands who have died, the civil war in Iraq and the volatile mess left by our neglectful and misguided policies in Lebanon and Palestine as the mere passing of the "old Middle East", which wasn't "so good" anyway. There is, therefore, no need to beat our breasts with mea culpas, no reason to fret about the failures and the devastating consequences of our misguided policy.

It is not our fault, it is theirs. And, in any case, things are better off now, because we said they were.

These people are so bereft of concern for the consequences of their actions because they're so disconnected from them. Rice sometimes gets a free pass as "the sane one" who tries to steer the ship of state to a more moderate course (I know that the media was trying hard to push that narrative). But her appalling lack of awareness suggests that she takes comfort in the bubble right with the President. It's this kind of circular logic that argues, no matter how things turn out, no matter what suffering and devastation is caused by their actions, it was the right thing to do anyway. The conclusion is reached, and then they argue backwards that it was both inevitable and proper. It's the exact wrong way to think about the world.