297

1-Condoleezza Rice is bright, but she is not a Middle East Expert!

Dear Peggy: No offence meant. I just want to freely express my opinion on Dr. Condoleezza Rice and set the record straight. It is very ironic and ridiculous to have in The White House a National Security Advisor who is advising the American President on delicate and very dangerous Middle and Near Eastern affairs and political strategies, when this advisor knows nothing about our Middle and Near Eastern culture, history, traditions, laws, historical inventions, tribal history, religion, and languages. The official bio of Dr. Rice is very impressive at academic and corporate  levels. She taught  politics in colleges and universities, and served on the board of large American corporations. However, Dr. Rice never visited any of our Arab countries, never learned how to speak one single Arabic word, never  lectured on Islamic history, Sharia, Hadith Sharif, Nazam Madani, and never been here in our lands and seen  what really is happening to us. She is simply a bright woman with a doctorate degree with enormous expertise on the former Soviet Union. True, her specially and area of expertise is the FORMER SOVIET UNION REGIME.  This leads me to conclude that any advice she is giving  President Bush on Islamic and Arabic issues and affairs has no weight and validity in the eyes and minds of our Arab people and leaders. I took he liberty to send you Dr. Rice's bio as posted by the US government on the Internet. This is what I read:    

 "Dr. Condoleezza Rice became the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, on January 22, 2001. In June 1999, she completed a six year tenure as Stanford University's Provost, during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As Provost she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and the academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students. As professor of political science, Dr. Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the highest teaching honors -- the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S.

Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions. From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military. She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula.

Continues on the following pages.