Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

November 21, 2005

Albright: All the Answers

"I'm gonna party like it's 1999." Well, that's what it feels like whenever Newsweek or another MSM outlet goes running to Madeleine Albright for all of the answers on our current foreign policy. In a recent hurlworthy interview with Newsweek, Ms. Albright shared her pearls of wisdom regarding the situation in Iraq. Of course, she had little, if anything, good to say. Here are a few highlights:

NEWSWEEK: Is there a conflict between key democratic rights—particularly in the area of women’s rights—and the cultural dictates of Islam?
Madeleine Albright: Islam itself and the Qur'an are not actually antiwoman. [The Prophet] Mohammed was married to a businesswoman. It is more the culture of particular Arab countries and not Islam. And I think that what we all have to do is make clear that women’s rights do not undermine anybody’s system. It’s a matter of empowering women, so that societies are actually more stable, not less stable.

She makes it sound so simple! "What we all have to do is make clear that women's rights do not undermine anybody's system." Albright is obviously missing the point. Radical Islamists believes that women have no rights whatsoever. That is one of the cornerstones of their belief system. Hearing platitudes from the U.S., whose culture is considered evil by Islamists, say that women's rights won't undermine radical Islam is like Heidi Fleiss telling the Catholic Church that a little extramarital sex isn't going to undermine anything they believe in either.

NW: What will it take for Iraq to make the next step from holding basic elections to a full-fledged independent democratic state?
MA: It’s very hard for people to exercise their democratic rights anywhere when they are terrified and there are suicide bombings and a general sense of chaos. Also, when the economic situation is so dire. So everything goes together. There has to be an improvement in the security situation, the reconstruction efforts have to be such that they provide people with jobs and [a] sense of the future and then democracy can flourish. While people did turn out to vote, which I think is quite remarkable, it’s very difficult when the situation in the security arena is so tenuous.

It's also very hard to exercise democratic rights when one doesn't have any, as under Saddam Hussein's rule. Sure it was remarkable that people actually turned out to vote despite all of violence. Think about it: Approximately 60% of eligible voters (including women) turned out for January's election, and 63% voted for the constitution back in October. This is amidst the constant threat of bombings and other violence by those who see democracy as evil. Compare this with the turnout for the recent U.S. presidential election--which, according to this graph, was about the same as the first Iraqi turnout. Considering American voters don't have to dodge bullets and bombs, shouldn't our voting citizens turn out in higher numbers? Albright's backhanded compliment to the Iraqis does them no favors.

NW: The report says that “the U.S. has done a poor job of explaining its policies in the region and spreading its message about democracy and reform.� In September, President Bush sent Karen Hughes, the recently appointed under secretary of State for public diplomacy, on a listening tour of several Muslim countries. What was she able to accomplish, and what do you think should be the next step?
MA: It was clearly a very first voyage of hers into this arena, but it didn’t strike me as a particularly great success. I think it’s very important that this post has been filled with somebody of such high rank and visibility, but it’s a hard job, and you have to go into societies and have some sensitivity for the various issues.

But did she accomplish anything? What should be the next step? Albright neatly sidesteps the question.

Read the entire interview for yourself. It's almost as if Albright was still on the Clinton administration's payroll. Get ready to do the Time Warp...

tagged: madeleine