WHICH ONE IS “DISHONORED?”
by Paul R. Hollrah, ©2014
(Jun. 7, 2014) — Two women named Rice… One is a former U.S. Secretary of State; the other is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Both are black; both are products of respected middle class families; both had distinguished careers in academia; both were Stanford women, one a student, the other a professor; and both served as national security advisors to U.S. presidents.
Condoleezza (“Condi”) Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama on November 14, 1954. Her given name, Condoleezza, is derived from the Italian musical expression, Con Dolcezza, which means “with sweetness.” Her father served as pastor of Birmingham’s Westminster Presbyterian Church and as a guidance counselor at Ullman High School. Her mother, Angelena Ray Rice, taught science, music, and forensics at Ullman.
Condi Rice has achieved a great deal in her life. Throughout her teens and before, she lived according to the precepts that her father taught her. He taught her that black people could never find fulfillment by waiting on others to do things for them. He taught her that, in order to reach her highest potential, in order to overcome the racial injustice that was built into the system, she’d have to work harder; she’d simply have to be “twice as good” as her white counterparts.
In 1967, her father became an assistant dean at the University of Denver. Condi graduated in 1970 from St. Mary’s Academy in Denver, an all-girls’ Catholic High School, and later attended the University of Denver. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1974, at age 19, and received her M.A. degree in political science from Notre Dame in 1975. She had no political ambitions, but as a rabid fan of college and professional football, the job she most coveted, her “dream job,” was to serve as commissioner of the National Football League.
After serving a State Department internship during the Carter Administration, an experience that caused her to leave the Democrat Party to become a Republican, she returned to the University of Denver, earning her Ph.D. in Political Science in 1981, at age 26. In addition to English, she speaks fluent Russian and French and has some fluency in German and Spanish, as well.
After earning her doctorate, she moved to Palo Alto, California, where she joined Stanford University as an assistant professor of Political Science. She was tenured in 1987, promoted to University Provost (chief budget and academic officer) in 1991, and to full professor in 1993.
As Provost, she was responsible for managing the university’s multi-billion-dollar budget and a debt that had grown to more than $20 million. Soon after becoming Provost she declared that the budget deficit would be eliminated within two years, a goal which faculty colleagues insisted was laudable, but unreachable. Two years later the budget was brought into balance and, under her stewardship, the university enjoyed a record surplus of more than $14.5 million.
In 2001 she was selected as White House national security adviser under President George W. Bush, and in January 2005 she became the nation’s 66th Secretary of State, succeeding Colin Powell. In 2007-08 she was prominently mentioned as a potential candidate for president or vice president, but she expressed no interest in pursuing the speculation.
Susan Elizabeth Rice was born in Washington, D.C. on November 17, 1964. Her father was Dr. Emmett J. Rice, a Cornell University economics professor and the second black member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Her mother was Lois (née Dickson) Fitt, a guest scholar in economic studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Rice attended Washington’s National Cathedral School, an all-girls’ Catholic day school, where she dreamed of one day becoming the first U.S. Senator elected from the District of Columbia. She was her class valedictorian, student council president, and a three-sport athlete.
Rice has said that her parents taught her to “never use race as an excuse or advantage,” yet she was haunted by a fear that, no matter what she might accomplish in life, her accomplishments would be cheapened by those who would attribute her success to affirmative action.
She attended Stanford University under a Truman Scholarship, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated in 1986 with a BA in history. Upon graduating from Stanford, Rice attended New College, Oxford, under a Rhodes Scholarship, where she earned a Masters of Philosophy in 1988 and a PhD in 1990.
Upon returning from England, Rice served as a foreign policy aide to Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis in his 1988 presidential campaign. When Dukakis was defeated by George H.W. Bush she joined McKinsey & Company as a management consultant. She left McKinsey in 1992 to work in the presidential campaign of Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.
Following Clinton’s election, Rice served on the White House National Security Council staff, as director for international organizations and peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995, and as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs from 1995 to 1997.
The Rwandan genocide of 1994 played a major role in shaping Rice’s attitude, not only toward foreign military interventions, but also her approach toward supporting a corrupt administration in the White House. As the body counts mounted in Rwanda… where an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were slaughtered, many hacked to death with machetes… Rice politicized the Clinton administration’s approach to the atrocities, saying, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?”
When the Clinton administration did nothing to curtail the slaughter, she was quoted as saying:
“I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” That approach would serve her well in later years as a dutiful member of Barack Obama’s cabinet.
In 2002, Rice joined the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow in foreign policy, where her primary focus was on weak and failing states, the implications of global poverty, and trans-national threats to security. During the 2004 presidential campaign she moonlighted as a foreign policy adviser to Senator John Kerry.
Then, in 2008, Rice’s life took a sinister turn that was destined to destroy what had been, until then, a truly exemplary career… she met Illinois Senator Barack Obama. She took a leave of absence from Brookings to serve as a senior foreign policy adviser in Obama’s presidential campaign, and when Obama defeated Senator John McCain in November 2008, Rice was tapped to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She was the second youngest person and the first African-American woman to represent the U.S. at the UN.
Rice was safely tucked away at U.N. headquarters on 1st Avenue in New York until September 16, 2012 when she was assigned a most unseemly task by Barack Obama. Although she was not in the direct chain of command between the Obama White House and U.S. diplomats abroad, Rice was recruited as a stand-in for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, provided with a list of talking points on the Benghazi disaster… talking points that the administration knew to be untrue… and told to disseminate the false narrative on five Sunday morning news programs.
As a dutiful spear-carrier in the most corrupt administration in American history, Rice dutifully appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News and brazenly lied to the American people. Instead of explaining what Obama and Clinton knew to be true… which is that Ambassador Chris Stephens and three other Americans were murdered in a radical Islamic terror attack…Rice insisted that the attack was rooted in an anti-Islamic video that almost no one had seen.
As a result, Rice’s reputation was thoroughly trashed. And while she might have been expected to learn something from the experience, she apparently did not. Instead, a day after Obama exchanged five of the most deadly terrorists in U.S. custody for a U.S. Army deserter named Bowe Bergdahl, Rice appeared on at least two Sunday morning news shows with Obama talking points in hand, insisting that the deserter had served his country with “honor and distinction.”
Two women named Rice: one famous, the other infamous. One served under George W. Bush and came away from the experience a highly respected woman, much admired across political and ideological lines, her integrity firmly intact. The other served under Barack Obama and, like nearly everyone who has entered his sphere of influence, was irreparably soiled in the process.
Condi Rice is a Republican, a woman of impeccable reputation; Susan Rice is a Democrat with a well-deserved reputation as a modern-day Ananias, a dishonored woman who has sold her soul in the cause of international socialism.
Susan Rice was completely justified in worrying that her accomplishments might be cheapened by those who would see her as a product of affirmative action. While true, that’s not what has caused her to “go down in flames.” Her very public humiliation is a direct result of her close association with Barack Obama and the lack of a moral compass. She and Barack Obama are the highest-ranking black man and black woman in U.S. political history. What a shame that the two are so corrupt that their failings reflect badly on all people of color. The black “sock-puppet” in the Oval Office has acquired his very own black “sock puppet.” They are a matching pair.
phollrah@fairpoint.net