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Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation and a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com.   Order his great book from Amazon.com, Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past.   Ian Williams is the past president of the United Nations Correspondents Association.  See his Bio.  See his columns listed below.   IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com 

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           UNITED NATIONS -- 17 November 2004 / www.MaximsNews.com /   Rice in State Department: World Cut Off.  

In the old Victorian and pre-Murdoch days of the Times in London , it allegedly had a headline “Fog in Channel-Continent Cut Off,” and now surely, the modern equivalent is “Rice in State Department: World Cut Off.”

We can draw some pleasure from this development, and without being masochistic either. The post electoral victory appointments from Bush suggest that he is in his “No More Mister Nice Guy” stage. The administration seems set in a hard-line ideological mold that, we should remember was not shared by the many GOP voters.

They were conned into believing that Bush was really a moderate, since he was so successful in keeping the real rabid reactionaries in their kennels for the duration of the campaign..

A real clincher will be if, as rumored, John Bolton, Cheney’s imposed attack dog in Powell’s State Department is promoted as Rice’s Deputy. 

Bolton is the man who has alienated most of the world with his campaign against the International Criminal Court, who for decades has been opposed to the United Nations in all its manifestations, who goes to the only Nuclear Power in the Middle East, Israel , to talk about the need for all the other states in the area to disarm.  

He reached his peak in arguing against effective international small arms disarmament conventions just before September 11, because it went against some global extension of NRA beliefs in the inherent goodness of personal weaponry.  

So why is this Drang Nach Rechts such good news, domestically and internationally? Well, let’s begin with Rice supplanting Powell. For four years, it has been the earnest bedtime prayer of almost every foreign head of state and foreign minister that Powell stay on in office. 

It has been profoundly reassuring for many of them that there was at least one person in the US administration who could take their calls and speak the same language: someone who could tell the Stans apart and knew that Iran and Iraq are separated by more than an inconvenient consonant.  

Apart from his low point, when he was suckered into lending his credibility to that dodgy show and tell in the Security Council on Iraqi weaponry, Powell was someone with whom the rest of the world thought they could do business.  

In cold fact, he became the good cop in a good cop/bad cop routine. He secured cooperation and concessions from other governments because he could go to them and ask for their cooperation to keep the crazies in the Pentagon at bay. 

If it were not for Rumsfeld and the like, and the still mysterious and possibly eschatologically inspired Mid March deadline that Bush imposed, Powell would probably have got the French and Russians to sign on for an attack on Iraq . He certainly got a lot more from than Rice is likely to.

 There will be no such finesse or credibility with Rice, who shows every sign of emulating Madeleine Albright in making “American Diplomacy” a self-evident oxymoron. And if Bolton becomes deputy, they really will have to install padded VIP lounges at foreign airports.  

As the pundits say, we will get an undiluted, unchallenged, unmoderated expression of American foreign policy, as conceived by those wonderful people who have been proved wrong on almost every statement they made about Iraq . If the florists of Fallujah are doing a roaring trade, it is not because the local are throwing bouquets at the murderers of wounded prisoners.  

If the citizens of Fallujah vote next year, you do not need a Zogby poll to suspect that not even Florida voting machines would get them to record a vote for government that set the USAF on them. The good news is that the undiluted and unadorned foreign policy will almost certainly be unattainable without the allies that Powell could bring on board.  

Hence my heavily qualified happiness at the Rice appointment. The US will get little or no cooperation from the rest of the world. Even the Middle East peace process Tony Blair claimed was the condition for his support in Iraq ,  is going to be reduced to giving Ariel Sharon what he wants.  

If, as seems likely, this hardnosed, messianic conservatism is reproduced in other quarters – like replacing Ashcroft with someone who has argued in favor of violations of the Geneva Conventions  and torture – then we can expect to see even the most rightwing Democrats hard pressed to carry on surrendering under the flag of “bipartisanship.”  

It is just possible the McCain may get some minor position in return for his work on behalf of the Bush clan that had so thoroughly shafted him in the past – but he is unlikely to have any leverage. The thirty pieces of silver he gets for betraying his own stated principles will almost certainly be counterfeit.  

However, we have to hope that the Democrat leaders at home and the democratic leaders abroad are up to the task of resisting the new NeoCon/Christian Crusade.

               Email Ian Williams:  IanWilliams@MaximsNews.com

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Deserter: George Bush's War on Military Families, Veterans, and His Past  

by Ian Williams

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New: Write a Letter to the Editor!!  www.MaximsNews.com/LetterstoEditor !!! 

Ian Williams' Weekly Columns in MaximsNews.com

Rice in State Department: World Cut Off...  17 November 2004

 Money Talks... 11 November 2004

Turkeys Voting For Christmas -- JOIN CANADA... 4 November 2004

KIM JONG IL Wants a Vote for the Incumbent Too!  28 October 2004

President Bush and the Three Little Pigs... 13 October 2004

When Hypocrisy Can Kill...  7 October 2004

Bush  - Still A Deserter Safire, still wrong...  15 September 2004

Bushowulf – the Saga   10 September 2004

Why Lebanon?...  9 September 2004

Ian Williams Welcomes Republicans to New York...  29 August 2004

What kind of Veteran?  Calley-type or Kerry-type?  25 August 2004

Chavez Beating about the Bush...  18 August 2004

The War Records of Bush and Kerry...  12 August 2004

Where is Osama Bin Laden?  6 August 2004

Sudan, To Intervene – or not to Intervene?  27 July 2004

Mr. Sharon, Tear Down This Wall!  16 July 2004

William Safire – Warped, on Speed, or Just Running Mad Again?  13 July 2004

Bosnian U.N. Defender Locked Up  7 July 2004

The U.N., the U.S. & the I.C.C.  30 June 2004

The New York Times, William Safire and the United Nations  23 June 2004

Hastily Contrived, Verbose, and Fudged: Security Council Resolution 1546  16 June 2004

Is the U.S. Clever Enough to Rule the World?  9 June 2004

Humor the Beast: the U.S. and the ICC  2 June 2004

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?  20 May 2004

The Solution to the Iraqi Knot  12 May 2004     

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