Condoleezza Rice, Student of Irrelevant History

Is Condoleezza Rice the best Secretary of State ever?

She tends to portray events, particularly the clash between what she calls “moderation” and “extremism” in the Middle East, as driven by huge, almost inevitable forces that make diplomacy impractical, or even irrelevant.

Damn right she is! Our nation’s top diplomat has been puzzling foreign policy and history nerds lately by comparing everything to the Cold War. Which happens to be her “area of expertise” as a “scholar of history.” We’re using the sense of “area of expertise” that means “the one single thing someone knows about a giant, complex subject.” Condi would kick ass at Trivial Pursuit Genus 1, in other words.

As a cold war scholar during the cold war, of course, Rice was known for wildly overestimating the military capabilities of the Soviet Union and her role in the first Bush administration’s bewildering decision to continue diplomatic relations with Mikael Gorbachev while Boris Yeltsin was actually running the country.

The war with Iran will last for 100 years.

How Rice Uses History Lessons [WSJ]