on a field of foolishness
Obama is promoting Susan Rice from ambassador to the UN – a field in which she has some experience, a lot of it “unfortunate” – to head the National Security Council (NSC).
According to her bio on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Rice), Rice served on the staff of the National Security Council and as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during President Bill Clinton's second term
Rice was a foreign policy aide to Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential election. She was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, from mid-1990 when she received her degree from Oxford to early 1992 when she worked for the Clinton campaign.
Rice served in the Clinton administration in various capacities: at the National Security Council (NSC) from 1993 to 1997; as director for international organizations and peacekeeping from 1993 to 1995 and as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs from 1995 to 1997.
At the time of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Rice reportedly said, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" Rice subsequently acknowledged the mistakes made at the time and felt that a debt needed repaying. The inability or failure of the Clinton administration to do anything about the genocide would inform her later views on possible military interventions. She would later say of the experience: "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required."
Basically, aside from some undefined work at the NSC (1993 to 1997) – during which she also worked as
- Director for international organizations and peacekeeping (1993 to 1995)
- Special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs (1995-1997)
Based on Ms. Rice’s CV, she has about zero experience with national security. Her management experience is equally thin. As ambassador to the UN, she took her marching orders from POTUS since she apparently has a poor relationship with the State Department. According to the bio, ”Rice had a poor relationship with State Department veteran Richard Holbrooke, whom she considered to be meddling on her turf and who in return had viewed her as incompetent.”
But she IS an Obama loyalist who denigrated John McCain’s trip to Iraq as nothing more than "strolling around the market in a flak jacket."
Actually, Samantha Power, Obama’s candidate to replace Rice at the UN, may have more NSC experience than Rice. According to her Wikipedia biography ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Power ), Power was Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council—responsible for running the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights from January 2009 to March 2013. (Note, however, that the Wikipedia bio already identifies her as the “current United States ambassador to the United Nations.”)
The candidate for the UN slot seems substantially better qualified for that job than Ms. Rice to direct the NSC.
Obama’s will be done. The only remaining question is: How much more damage to the country will he do before his term is completed.
