Madeleine Albright is an Idiot

Madeleine Albright has written a new book entitled, Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America’s Reputation and Leadership, providing advice on foreign policy. Getting foreign policy advice from Albright is like getting marriage advice from Ike Turner or health advice from Dr. Kavorkian. There is a long list of foreign policy blunders and missteps by this idiot, Albright.

One of her colossal blunders was the phenomenal miscalculation of Slobodan Milosevic’s response to the US-led bombing campaign in Serbia and Bosnia. Albright was criticized by the Washington Post and the BBC for being the “hawk” in the Clinton Administration who pressed for the US to use military means to oust the Serbian leader, Milosevic. According to these sources, she believed Milosevic would back down after the first wave of air attacks. The BBC claimed, “When Milosevic refused to accept the Rambouillet peace accord, the State Department was reported to have been `baffled’ and was wholly unprepared for the ethnic cleansing which swiftly followed.” (Tom Carver, “Madelaine Albright: Haunted by History” BBC News [9 April 1999]; World: America’s Albright Denies Prosecuting `Personal War,’” BBC News [8 April 1999]).

Don’t get me wrong, the European Union let the violence and genocide go on for far too long in Bosnia. The US should have stepped in much sooner than we did. The point is that she is not the great foreign policy expert she wants us to believe.

When pressed about America’s military intervention in Bosnia, according to the BBC, she told CNN, “But I think that any American who has the privilege to live in this country understands the importance of standing up for values and not allowing ethnic cleansing to reoccur. This is not my war. This is America's fight for our values." “World: America’s Albright Denies Prosecuting `Personal War,’” BBC News (8 April 1999).

Apparently, this consideration for ethnic cleansing did not apply to Rwanda four years earlier. On “Frontline’s” “Ghosts of Rwanda,” she chocked up the total failure of the US to abide by its legal obligation to follow the UN’s Charter against genocide as the result of confusion and ignorance while she was ambassador to the UN. For example, she stated, “But I think that what had happened was that basically there was very little information about Rwanda brought to the Security Council. We were dealing with a lot of other issues. I think that what's important to realize is the context of everything. There had been killings in Somalia, Bosnia; just constant attention to a lot of other issues, unfortunately. We did know obviously that there were struggles both in Rwanda and Burundi.” Apparently, neither the UN Security Council nor the National Security Council had paid its cable bill because the genocide in Rwanda was on CNN. Her response to the obvious question about the US’s manifest failure to stop the Rwandan genocide is even more idiotic. The interviewer asked, “The phrase `Never again’ -- did it mean anything? Did it apply in 1994?” Albright’s tortured response was, “The thing is that there were so many kinds of legalistic -- and I found irritating -- discussions about whether this was genocide or not. But those were not ones that-- There's no way to describe exactly that the role of the U.N. ambassador is not the same as-- While you are a Cabinet member and a member of the principals committee, it's not quite the same as being secretary of state or national security adviser. So I think they are very hard roles.
“I think `Never again’ definitely applies, but at the time-- I have to make so clear to you that, at the time, people just did not have the sense that this was happening in the proportions that it was. By the time that it happened, you couldn't do anything about it. That's why my lesson has been that you can't kind of ignore ethnic cleansing, because it develops some momentum that you have to stop as early as you can.” In other words, “Yes, but …” What a profound idiot.

More information about Albright’s idiocies, including what may be her greatest achievement in the idiot arena when she let slip though her hands an entire dossier on bin Laden and his associates in the Sudan, is found at: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=madeleine_albright

What is particularly galling about this idiot is her phenomenal level of hypocrisy. In an interview by Thomas Omestad, “Cleaning Up a Foreign Policy Mess,” US News & World Report (14 January 2008), 18, she criticizes the Bush administration for its unilateralism in foreign policy. This would be a fair criticism except for the fact that in 1994, Albright, speaking of Iraq, declared to the UN, “We recognize this area as vital to US national interests and we will behave, with others, multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must.” (Quoted in Stephen Zunes, “Foreign Policy by Catharsis: The Failure of U.S. Policy Toward Iraq,” in Arab Studies Quarterly [Fall 2001] and Steven Greenhouse, “U.S. Says Iraq Appears to Resume Pullback From Kuwait Border” The New York Times [17 October 1994]).

If this appalling idiocy and hypocrisy were not enough, now, add to the mix a staggering level of hubris. On the 8 January 2008 episode of “Today,” Ann Curry asked, apologetically, “Given, with all due respect to, to all the years you served as Secretary of State, first woman in that role. Given that, al Qaeda is accused of causing the attacks of the embassy bombings in Africa, of the USS Cole and, and, and the United States is being criticized under the Clinton administration for not responding, perhaps, enough then. Does that, what, what is your response to this idea that perhaps this may question whether you should be giving this advice?” Albright’s entire answer was: “Well I, I think, I was the lead witness on 9/11 commission. I went over our record. I think we worked very hard to make people pay attention to terrorism and what people don't know is that before 9/11 it was even hard to get people's attention on it. I think that I'm in a very good position to give advice. I worked on the Hill. I worked for, for President Carter and for President Clinton. And I, this is my subject, and I've spent a lot of time. This book is out of my personal experiences and so I hope that, in fact, my advice will be taken. And this is to anybody that is going to win the presidency.”

To put this idiocy another way: I am the smartest person, ever, on issues of foreign policy. You idiot Americans wouldn’t listen to my phenomenal intellectual insights about terrorists. I’m smart. I worked in the White House. I know things because I spent a lot of time doing things. You should listen to me. The next president, if she’s smart, will give me a job.

What an idiot.