Maureen Dowd: 'Air-guitar diplomacy' of Condoleezza Rice

RAW STORYPublished: Saturday July 22, 2006

In her latest column, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd blasts the "air-guitar diplomacy" practiced by Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in regards to the conflict in Lebanon, RAW STORY has found.

"The more W. and his tough, by-any-means-necessary superbabe have tried to tame the Middle East, the more inflamed the Middle East has become," writes Dowd.

"Now the secretary of state is leaving, reluctantly and belatedly, to do some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling," Dowd continues. "It's more like air-guitar diplomacy."

Excerpts from Dowd's column:
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Condi doesn't want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran -- "Syria knows what it needs to do," she says with asperity -- and she doesn't want a cease-fire. She wants "a sustainable cease-fire," which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.

"I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do," she said.

Keep more civilians from being killed? Or at least keep America from being even more despised in the Middle East and around the globe?

Like Davy Jones, the octopus-headed creature who had to keep sailing Flying Dutchman-like without getting to land in the new "Pirates of the Caribbean," Condi had a hard time finding an Arab port in which to dock.
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The cowboy president bet the ranch on Iraq, and that war has made almost any other American action in the Arab world, and any Pax Americana that might have been created there, impossible. It's fitting that Condi is the Flying Dutchman, since Lebanon represents the shipwreck of our Middle East policy.
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TIMES SELECT SUBSCRIBERS CAN READ FULL DOWD COLUMN HERE