Integrity, Loyalty and Princeton: Condie's Visit in Context
by Danilo Mandic

Published in the Princeton Progressive Nation, October 2005.

CORNEL WEST: If Condoleezza Rice were with us this evening, what would you say to her?

TONI MORRISON: Oh, I would strongly suggest that Condoleezza Rice get another job. (laughter, applause) I know what her seductive power is -- She's an educated woman. She's a gifted woman. She's a talented woman. She has a lot of attributes. Why trash them? In an area, and I know that she has benefited time and time again from that part of the political spectrum, and particularly that family, but loyalty is not all there is in life. There's something called real integrity. I don't think she – she does not understand that.

(DemocracyNow! Interview, May 28th 2004)

Fair enough. Condoleezza Rice’s sycophancy blinds her to the meaning of integrity. But what about Princeton University? What about the Woodrow Wilson School? Does, for example, Ann-Marie Slaughter understand what real integrity is? Does she believe that there’s more to life than loyalty to a part of the political spectrum? Looking at some of the names the University (and the Woodrow Wilson School in particular) has embraced recently might reveal the answer. Rice is yet another recipient of Princeton’s abundant support for celebrity statesmen.

Recall the presentation of the Crystal Tiger Award for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, presumably for his efforts at waging illegal wars, promoting monstrous lies, violating international law, and advocating murderous sanctions. The gentleman was presented the award “on behalf of the entire undergraduate student body,” a decision mysteriously unknown at the time to the entire undergraduate student body (with the exception of several students on the Crystal Tiger Award Committee).

There was also the warm welcome of Robert McNamara in November 2004. WWS Dean Anne Marie Slaughter praised his commendable career as architect of the Vietnam War and expressed the WWS students’ gratitude for his visit. Thus one of the men most responsible for bringing the world closer to nuclear war delighted his audience with a discussion of "The Folly of Current U.S. and NATO Nuclear Policy."

Next was the embrace of George Shultz (an honorary co-chair at the Princeton Project on National Security). Schultz was part of a celebrated panel on “National Sovereignty and International Institutions,” even after having violated the former and undermined the latter during Reagan’s terrorist wars in Central America. Under the co-sponsorship of the WWS, he delivered a heart-breaking defense of U.S. refusal to cooperate with international criminal tribunals.

And of course, there was the reservation of ‘Keynote Speaker’ time for Israeli Defense Forces celebrity Giora Eiland, condemned by the UN Commission of Inquiry for “Grave Breaches and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law” because of IDF war crimes committed under his leadership. He discussed his experiences as perpetrator of the massacre in Jenin, in which capacity he found, according to Amnesty International (4/22/02), that “bulldozing” and “destroying houses” was “the most humanitarian way to deal with the situation.”

Finally, remember the grand reception of General Anthony Zinni at last year’s Rethinking the War on Terror conference. The keynote speaker was formerly the head of Operations Restore Hope, Continue Hope, and United Shield in Somalia. In July 1995, Foreign Policy revealed that it was under his command that troops slaughtered from 7000 to 10000 Somalis, according to the CIA. He also held experience in maintaining illegal no-fly zones in Iraq and, the International Red Cross found (1/26/99), bombing civilians in unprovoked US attacks, such as the one in al-Jumhuriya.

One might wonder how inviting this cast of characters reflects the WWS’s commitment to integrity and honor. To make things even more puzzling, all the speeches were largely unchallenged and unquestioned. For example, the Rethinking the War on Terror conference last semester hosted exclusively statesmen or former statesmen of the same political alliegance as keynote speakers. Not a single voice could be heard from the receiving end of the ‘war on terror’ which, incidentally, represents the majority of world opinion. Giving loyal politicians and policy makers free propaganda sessions, therefore, seems to be commonplace in Princeton.

If anyone had doubted this, Rice’s visit should be a not-so-subtle reminder. Her own loyalty undoubtedly qualifies her to join the league of McNamara, Shultz and co. Rice’s allegiance to the Reaganite clique – Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell – extends back to her involvement in the first Bush administration. At the time, she was promoting George I’s friendship with Saddam Hussein, as well as the invasions of Iraq and Panama. Yet, when she was still Provost of Stanford University, Rice had an informal chat with essayist Alan Block about the bombing of Serbia. As Block recalls, she criticized it with the following cautionary note:

Military conflict always entails risks, and usually bigger risks than are at first anticipated," she told me. "If we start to get the idea we can have risk-free wars whenever some foreign leader displeases us, we'll be in a lot of trouble (Block’s Eye on the Empire, 12/27/2000).

By the time Bush II took her under his highly-exclusive wing, she had apparently overcome this anxiety and embraced preventive war as a global U.S. policy. Gradually, lying had become second nature and a job prerequisite for Dr. Rice. Highlights of her deceit include:

(1) backing Bush’s State of the Union speech claim that Iraq is attempting to acquire uranium from Niger (Sunday Herald, 10/13/03);

(2) connecting Hussein’s regime to the atrocities of 9/11 (CBS 3/28/04);

(3) connecting Hussein’s regime to Al Qaeda (CNN 9/26/02);

(4) denying knowledge that she had of the possibility of a terrorist attack on the US shortly prior to 9/11 (LA Times 9/27/01);

(5) rejecting the proven claim that the White House knew of the US intelligence community’s uncertainty and skepticism about Iraq WMD claims (Washington Post 7/27/03);

(6) guaranteeing the existence of Iraq’s WMD program, as well as Hussein’s intent to abuse it (CNN interview, 3/18/04).

Now, that’s loyalty.

Other accomplishments by Dr. Rice are all too easy to find. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, she headed the Iraq Stabilization Group, which played a major role in occupation management. She oversaw most of the brutal sieges in the aftermath of the war, and several US agencies involved in torture (Source Watch - “Iraq Stabilization Group”). In late May of 2005, Amnesty International issued a crucial report on the worldwide decrease in respect for human rights. They found that the US is mostly responsible for the global human rights retreat, partly because of its practices at Guantanamo Bay, which they called “the Gulag of our times.” Washington has become "a leading purveyor and practitioner" of torture and ill-treatment, warned William Schulz of AI, and called on all governments to investigate senior US officials involved in torture and arrest and prosecute them if they should enter their territory. Rice was quick to dismiss the report and to uphold her government’s violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Another credential on the WWS’s guest’s resume is the execution of an illegal coup in Haiti and the abduction of the popularly elected president, Jeanne-Bertrand Aristide. In March 2004, as she was persistently refusing to testify in front of the 9/11 Commission, she threatened that Jamaica would face consequences if it did not expel Aristide from the entire Western hemisphere (Democracy Now 3/25/04). A year later, Rice traveled to Pakistan and India to promote US sales of F-16 fighter jets to both countries, a gesture of endorsement for the existence of nuclear weapons in the two states (Wall Street Journal 3/15). She has also given consistent diplomatic support for Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes which compete with North Korea for most brutal records of suppressing dissidents and democratic movements. She is equally keen on sending billions of US taxpayer dollars to Israel for brutal military campaigns. Despite widespread condemnation of Ariel Sharon’s policies in the occupied territories, Rice was a keynote speaker at the pro-Israeli lobbying group American Israeli Public Affairs Committee in May of this year. Her speech was delivered only three weeks after AIPAC (one of five most influential interest groups in the US – Fortune magazine) illegally received information from one of the Pentagon’s top officials working on Iran (DN 5/25).

In her capacity as a citizen, Rice is equally determined to promote democracy and human rights. As one of six people on the social policy committee of Chevron, she led the effort to restrain shareholder initiatives to have Chevron cease its support for Nigeria’s bloody military government, which suppresses Ogoni activists and murders dissidents (See Laura Flaunders, Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species). Many compare this instance of her utter indifference for Africans to her attitude towards African Americans in New Orleans. Nevertheless, she occasionally plays her notorious ‘race card.’ In a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists, she took the opportunity to employ some feeble ‘race talk’ for her war-cheerleading campaign:

“And let us never indulge the condescending voices who allege that some people are not interested in freedom or aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities. That view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad” (UK Telegraph 9/8/2003).

Notice here that the antiwar movement is alleging that the Iraqis are uninterested or unprepared for freedom. Notice also that George Wallace is the moral equivalent of a critic of Bush’s wars, while Civil Rights Activists are the moral equivalents of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and other struggling victims of oppression. Above all, notice that demanding Iraqi freedom from foreign occupying forces is implied to be nothing less than condescending racism. Lacking loyalty to Bush, you might say, is condescending – on a par with the perpetrators of the Birmingham terrorism of 1963.

A question arises from all of this: if the WWS Dean “cannot imagine a better person” for an event like this, what does that say about our school? It appears that ‘integrity’ has been substituted with something less virtuous. The university, rather than promoting free dialogue in a critical intellectual arena has, for the most part, reduced itself to the shameful status of academic ‘stamp’ and speakerphone for those in power. Loyalty has stepped in; integrity remains only in mission statements and press releases.

Toni Morrison mentioned the benefit of loyalty. Does Princeton, as a university, understand the price of it?