Condi -- Tres Jolie in Gay Paree!

By Aussiegirl

I think Condoleeza Rice may prove to be one of the smartest appointments that President Bush has made in his entire presidency to date. Today in Paris, she delivered one of the finest, most eloquent and persuasive speeches I have heard to date articulating in convincing detail and logic the policies that the Bush administration has put forth in its quest to end the scourge of terror by democratizing the Middle East, one country at a time.

She charmed and awed the audience of French intellectuals and politicians with her persuasive language and her engaging manner. And there is no mistaking that she speaks for the President. No adviser is as closely associated with Mr. Bush as is Condi Rice, and so I think that she will be a much more effective Secretary of State than even the suave, urbane and somewhat aloof and European Colin Powell had been.

I think that the Europeans saw Colin Powell somewhat as "their kind of guy". That is, they believed that in his heart Powell agreed with them, but that he was being a good soldier and delivering the message of the Commander in Chief, so his words were perhaps less than persuasive, delivered as the French believed they were, with a wink and a nod and less in anger than in sorrow.

But there is no mistaking who Condi Rice speaks for, and she is convincing, powerful and charming. I think if President Bush ever visits France along with Condi he would be advised to follow the example of JFK before him, who announced himself at a state dinner as "The man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris." President Bush should say -- "I am the man who accompanied Condoleeza Rice to Paris." He'd bring the house down. And she speaks fluent French and plays classical piano. They won't last long before her charm offensive. Even the audience of left-wing political scientists seemed awed and impressed. (Of course we should never underestimate the propensity of the French to overestimate their own perspicacity.)

If anyone doubted Rice's intellectual prowess, knowledge and ability to articulate extemporaneously, they need look no further than her final remarks on a personal note about her memories of being in Paris on two previous occasions, one in 1989.


"But I was here in 1989 for the bicentennial. It was a remarkable year.
And I was lucky enough to be the White House Soviet specialist at the
end of the Cold War. So I got to participate in the liberation of
Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany, the beginnings of the
peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union: things that I never thought I
would see let alone have a chance to participate in.

You know, I realized that I was just lucky enough to be harvesting good
decisions that had been taken in 1946 and in 1947 and in 1948 and in
1949, when those leaders at the end of World War II faced a dizzying
array of threats -- strategic threats to the progress of freedom and
liberty.

When you think about the fact that in 1946 much of Europe lay in ruins
and there were real concerns about the importation of communism into
Europe from the Soviet Union; if you think about in 1947 there was civil
wars in Greece and Turkey; in 1948, we experienced the Czechoslovak
crisis and the collapse of that democratic government; in 1948, the
Berlin crisis split Germany for what seemed to be permanently; in 1949,
the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule
and the Chinese communists won the civil war, now, how did they do it?

How did they form NATO? How did they support a united Europe?
How did they move forward on an agenda that 50 years later produced the
circumstances in which Germany could be unified, the rest of Europe
could be freed of tyranny, and we could be talking about a NATO that
includes not just France and Germany and the United States, but Poland
and the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the Baltic states?

How did they do it? They did it because they remained united as an
alliance of values.

And I know it looks really hard to talk about the spread of freedom and
liberty into places where it has never been. I know it looks really
hard, when we see the pictures from Iraq of the suicide bombers, to
think that the Iraqi people are going to build a free and stable
democratic state. I know it looks hard when we look at Afghanistan and
how far it has to go.

But this last month or so -- little more than that -- has been something
else. How could you not be impressed with the Rose Revolution in Georgia
and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and with Palestinian people going
to elect a leader who says that it is time to give up the armed intifada
and live in peace with Israel?
And how could you not be impressed by the Afghans really in a very
underdeveloped society standing along dusty roads to vote, where women
used to hide their faces and couldn't even have medical care without a
male relative, and now they stand and they vote and they run for office?

And how could not be impressed with the Iraqi people and their facing
down fear?

So much is changing in our world. So much is changing in the Middle
East. And if we, in this great alliance, put our values and our efforts
and our resources to work on behalf of this great cause, we've only just
begun to see what freedom can achieve.
Thank you very much."

Read the entire
Transcript of this speech.