[img]962|left|||no_popup[/img]An only slightly repentant former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a well-heeled, prestigious conference crowd on the Future of Asia at the Chinese University of Hong Kong last March that she had misgivings over the way things ultimately turned out in Iraq. If she had it to do over again, she would press her boss, President Bush, to make a better effort to get the Iraqis more involved in the grunt work of actually rebuilding the war-ravaged country.
Rice, of course, tactfully made two important omissions to the conference crowd. One, she and the circle of hard-nosed warhawks were the ones who hectored, badgered and hammered Bush to launch the war that ravaged the country, a war virtually universally regarded as a failed, flawed, wasteful and grotesquely unnecessary war.
Her even more damning second omission was that to sell the war as indispensable to the war on terrorism, she and the hawks distorted, exaggerated facts and events and flat out lied. Seven years later, with Bush safely gone from the White House and more than a few fingers happily but wrongly pointing at the Obama administration for Bush’s Iraq misadventure, and Rice safely ensconced back at Stanford University, she can gloss over Iraq.
Instead, she can concentrate on painting a compelling, sympathetic picture of herself as a black woman who suffered the sting of racial persecution, bigotry and even the threat of violence to rise to a pivotal political figure.
Sounds Good, Doesn’t It?
At first glance, the story she tells in her memoir, “Extraordinary, Ordinary People,” is extraordinary. She recounts the segregated schools, swimming pools, libraries and housing, the voting exclusion and the ever pervasive threat of physical violence that was part of the tapestry of 1950s Jim Crow-, Bull Conner- terrorized Birmingham where she grew up. She talks about the strength, perseverance and determination of her parents, their constant push to instill in their sons and daughters the value of education. Education, they knew, was a surefire ticket out of America’s self-imposed racial trap for blacks.
Rice took the message to heart. Her personal success story is well-known. She obtained her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974 where she enrolled at the age of 15; her master's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1975. And she got her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981. Her years as an influential and much-sought-after international affairs expert and planner, culminating in her pick as Bush’s first National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State are just as well-known.
These are truly breakthroughs, even pioneering, glass ceiling-shattering breakthroughs for a woman of color. They can inspire other young women to attain the heights. In any other time, place and especially with any administration other than Bush’s, Rice would be hailed and lauded as the political affairs Rosa Parks. She would deservedly be held up as a worthy model of what a black woman with grit and tenacity can do to smash her way out of the suffocating racial and gender boxes.
Their Opinions Are Unswerving
That is not the case with Rice, though. Mention Condoleezza Rice even now and the reaction among Bush-bashers and most blacks is still pretty much the same as what it was when singer-activist Harry Belafonte in 2006 blasted her and Colin Powell as “house Negroes.” Belafonte’s blast drew near universal applause from blacks. It almost certainly would get the same reaction today from most blacks.
It would be the rarest of sights to find Rice’s picture on the walls and in the showcases of inner city schools that festoon them with the faces and names of prominent black figures. The hostility to and dismissal of Rice hinges on her as a racial traitor in the reviled Bush administration. It is grossly unfair to lay that tag on her.
Her accomplishments are undeniable. They should not be cavalierly sloughed off. There is even evidence she spoke up at a critical point when Bush was gung-ho to scrap the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan in 2003. Rice softened the Bush position by publicly protesting that race could be used as a factor in school admissions. The court agreed.
This didn’t change the loathe of Rice by many blacks and Bush-loathers then. Her admirable fight to overcome racial adversity won’t change or soften their opinion of her now. Condi’s remarkable personal triumphant over the racial odds were praiseworthy then. They still are. Unfortunately, her moving civil rights story can’t trump the role she played in Bush’s despicable Iraq folly.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is “How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge” (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
