Barack Obama is reaching back through the years to find cabinet members with experience to fill the void created by his complete lack of experience. Good idea that, but what of the choices? Will his cabinet be built from solid hardwood, soft pine, or driftwood gathered from the shattered vessels of past administrations.
Here are the appointments we know so far:
Rahm Emanuel Chief of Staff
Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner
Secretary of Commerce: Bill Richardson
Chairwoman, Council of Economic Advisers: Christina Romer
Director, National Economic Council: Lawrence Summers
Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board: Paul Volcker
Director, Office of Management and Budget: Peter R. Orszag; Deputy Director will be Rob Nabors
Secretary of State: Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates
Secretary of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations: Susan Rice
Attorney General: Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle
Commenting on all of them in one sitting would create an article some (including me) might consider too long to read. So let’s start with Susan Rice, Obama’s choice for US Ambassador to the United Nations which has been elevated to a cabinet level position:
- Foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis in 1988
- Several positions in Clinton administration
- Foreign policy advisor to John Kerry 2004
- From Wiki - In a 2002 op-ed piece in the Washington Post, former Ambassador to Sudan Timothy Carney and news contributor Mansoor Ijaz implicated Rice and counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke in missing an opportunity to neutralize Osama bin Laden while he was still in Sudan. They write that Sudan and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were ready to cooperate on intelligence potentially leading to bin Laden, but that Rice and Clarke persuaded National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to overrule Albright.
- From NRO - Even after the reality of genocide in Rwanda had become irrefutable, when bodies were shown choking the Kagera River on the nightly news, the brute fact of the slaughter failed to influence U.S. policy except in a negative way. American officials, for a variety of reasons, shunned the use of what became known as “the g-word.” They felt that using it would have obliged the United States to act, under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention. They also believed, understandably, that it would harm U.S. credibility to name the crime and then do nothing to stop it. A discussion paper on Rwanda, prepared by an official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and dated May 1, testifies to the nature of official thinking. Regarding issues that might be brought up at the next interagency working group, it stated,
Genocide Investigation: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday-Genocide finding could commit [the U.S. government] to actually “do something.”
At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?”
- American Thinker – Susan Rice was John Kerry’s chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. One of the major steps Kerry suggested for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint James Baker and Jimmy Carter as negotiators. When furor erupted at the prospect of two of the most ardent foes of Israel being suggested to basically ride “roughshod” over Israel, Kerry backtracked and blamed his staff for the idea. His staff was Susan Rice.
- Newsweek 1998- To top off all the troubles, a new history of the 1994 Rwanda genocide in which Hutus massacred Tutsi civilians is reopening debate over why Washington blocked steps that might have curbed the bloodletting.
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But Clinton is not spared. Gourevitch chronicles the pitiful evasions his spokesmen used to avoid pronouncing the word “”genocide.” A 1948 U.N. convention obliges members to “”undertake to prevent and punish” such acts. But the U.N. force in Rwanda was withdrawn after 10 Belgian soldiers were killed, even though their commander said he could stop the killing with 5,000 troops. “”The desertion of Rwanda by the U.N. force was Hutu Power’s greatest diplomatic victory to date, and it can be credited almost single-handedly to the United States,” writes Gourevitch. “”. . . [Albright, U.N. representative at the time] is rarely associated with Rwanda, but ducking and pressuring others to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, was the absolute low point in her career as a stateswoman.”
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But he leaves out the Pentagon’s post-genocide role in training and resupplying the Tutsi troops that took over Rwanda in a drive from neighboring Uganda. The book also fails to note that Washington provided a smokescreen for the multinational force that invaded neighboring Zaire from Rwanda in 1996 and overthrew the notorious dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Administration sources insisted they had no prior knowledge of the offensive, but according to one highly placed strategist of the war, Washington had promised not to oppose such an incursion. It’s a fine, Clintonian, distinction. “”Anything’s better than Mobutu,” Susan Rice told one acquaintance at the time. But in the view of many Africa specialists, Washington’s tacit complicity in the violation of the Congo’s borders was dangerously destabilizing.
Today, forces from at least six armies are vying over that territory. In congressional testimony this month, Rice called it “”an unprecedented regionalized war.”
To summarize, Susan Rice: may have blocked an arrangement with Sudan to turn OBL over to the US; put a congressional election ahead of intervening to stop the genocide in Rwanda; recommended the appointment of Baker and Carter, not known to be fans of Israel, as negotiators in the Middle East; and supported the illegal invasion of Zaire and the ousting of it’s dictator.
Interesting qualifications for US Ambassador to the UN.
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