Susan Rice To The United Nations

Tom Maguire tells us what we may not have known about Susan Rice.

Ms. Rice supported Obama's Jan 2007 plan for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq back when the National Intelligence Estimate was that it would lead to increased violence there. But otherwise, genocide is a bad thing. Puzzling. If removing US troops "ends the war" in Iraq, why not announce that the absence of US troops ended the war in Darfur?

Her motivation is her experience with Rwanda:

During her first run at the State Department, Ms. Rice was a point person in responding to Al Qaeda’s 1998 bombing of United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But her most searing experience was visiting Rwanda after the 1994 genocide when she was still on the N.S.C. staff.

As she later described the scene, the hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing, hacked up bodies that she saw haunted her and fueled a desire to never let it happen again.

“I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required,” she told The Atlantic Monthly in 2001. She eventually became a sharp critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the Darfur killings and last year testified before Congress on behalf of an American-led bombing campaign or naval blockade to force a recalcitrant Sudanese government to stop the slaughter.

"Going down in flames" is entirely metaphorical, of course - Ms. Rice won't be carrying a rifle or piloting a chopper, unlike real soldiers who will risk going down in actual flames in order to soothe her troubled conscience.

The heroism of women in Washington is a wonder to behold.