Condi Rice Backpedaling?

The Opinion Journal interviews Condi, who is ten minutes EARLY for her meeting. [Egocentric narcissist Billy Jeff C. kept Kofi Annan waiting for fifteen minutes, although that is far less than his average of at least an hour.]

Condi sounds as though she is sipping a bit of the Eurotrash Kool-Aid, perhaps to get an immunity dose.

"I don't think that this is a battle, if you will, or a struggle that's going to be won on George W. Bush's watch," she says of the war on terror. Maybe this accounts for her sang-froid--at times seeming to border on emotional detachment--in the face of all the reversals in Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo and Ramallah: She chooses to read the present as if it were already the past.

There's something to be said for thinking about the world this way, and Ms. Rice is nothing if not clear about the nature of the enemy, the shape of the conflict, the need to rally "moderate democratizing forces" throughout the Middle East as the great antidote to Arab and Islamic radicalism. On the terrorists: "They're not going back into the woodwork. They have to be defeated." On Iraq: "We just have to fight tooth and nail for the victory of the Iraqis who do not want Iranian influence in their daily lives." On Iran: "We've got a chance to resist the Iranian push into the region, but we better get about it. I mean, it's not the sort of thing that you can just let continue in its current form." On Lebanon: "You have to resist Hezbollah . . . [and] try to strengthen the moderate Lebanese forces, which is not an easy matter." On the Palestinians: "You have to resist the Damascus Hamas, creating a situation in the Palestinian territories where moderates can emerge."

The interlocutor comes back to this trope late in the session:

Something else is disconcerting, albeit so subtle that I only noticed it in the transcript of the interview. Rewind the tape and linger over the words "the Damascus Hamas." What's with the definite article? Ms. Rice circles back to the subject later in the discussion, when the subject of Islamist gains in democratic elections comes up. "Hamas," she says, "has learned a pretty tough lesson. They have not been able to govern. . . . You know, all of the talk about . . . all this Iranian money coming in and they . . . were going to be supported, it hasn't happened. People are on strike, they can't make their peace with the international community, and it's been really tough. And, in fact, it's been especially tough if you are [Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail] Haniyeh in the territories, as opposed to [overall Hamas leader] Khaled Mashal in Damascus."

The lesson here would seem to be that by putting a diplomatic and economic quarantine on Hamas after its victory in January's election, Palestinians have been made to recognize that there is a price to be paid for electing the Martyrs' Party. But the suggestion--which is gaining increasing currency in the foreign-policy establishment--is that Hamas is, or may with encouragement become, two parties: A radical, IRA-type wing led by Mashal in Damascus and a "moderate," Sinn Fein-like one led by Haniyeh in Ramallah. Does Ms. Rice really believe this? I kick myself for not asking, but someone should.

Granted, Condi elsewhere in this interesting interview refers to "Iranian reasonables" as opposed to the famous Iranian moderates, i.e., those that have run out of ammunition! But the interviewer notices her long-term metaphor of an airline flight that is experiencing "turbulence" as the ground of her thinking.

Wouldn't a more appropriate trope be "snakes on a plane?"