Condi Just Doesn't See It

QUESTION: How worried are you about this notion in the Middle East as well as here that America’s adversaries are on the ascendancy – Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, radical Islamists, armed groups – challenging the United States and its allies in the region?

SECRETARY RICE: I just don’t see it.

That's taken from an interview with Hisham Melhem of Al Arabiya.

Here's her full remarks in response to her panoramic view of the Middle East:

Well, first, let’s look at the Middle East when this President became President in 2001 and the Middle East now. In 2001, you had a raging intifada after the collapse of the Camp David talks. You had in power in Israel a prime minister who did not come to power talking about bringing peace, and you had Yasser Arafat in power in the Palestinian Territories. You had Lebanon with Syrian forces occupying Lebanon, which they had done for decades. Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq, threatening his neighbors, as he had done for decades. There really wasn’t very much discussion of democracy in the Middle East.

And you look now and you see that, first and foremost, Saddam Hussein is out of power. And while Iraqis are struggling with their new democracy, they are now a democratic state, a multiconfessional, multiethnic, democratic state. Lebanon has a president. Lebanese forces are throughout the country for the first time in decades; Syrian forces are out. Syria has established proper diplomatic relations with Lebanon.

You have a situation in which throughout the Middle East, people talk about popular rule, women can vote in Kuwait, elections have been held in a number of places, and in the Palestinian-Israeli situation, the two-state solution is now taken for granted that this the only real possibility. And President Bush, who put it on the agenda in 2001, has helped the parties come to a process after Annapolis so that you have the first really robust peace process in a number of years.

And so yes, it’s still a difficult region, but I think a lot has been achieved over the last several years.

QUESTION: How worried are you about this notion in the Middle East as well as here that America’s adversaries are on the ascendancy – Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, radical Islamists, armed groups – challenging the United States and its allies in the region?

SECRETARY RICE: I just don’t see it. I think that what we have is that yes, the Middle East is seeing extremism exposed in ways that it was undercover preparing for September 11th, but now it’s exposed and it’s being fought across the region by all kinds of states and all kinds of people. You know, I saw an interesting poll the other day. Osama bin Ladin has just been dropping in terms of, quote, “popularity.” Why? Not because of what the United States says, but because decent, honest people in the Middle East, decent, honest Muslims, are saying that is not a message with which we resonate.

We’re seeing al-Qaida defeated. Yes, they’re still dangerous. But in Iraq, they are well on their way to defeat because Iraqis rose up against them. You are seeing that suicide bombing as a technique doesn't have legitimacy throughout the Middle East, and instead you see a Middle East that is looking to women’s education and women’s rights; a Middle East that is looking to technological change – cell phone usage is up, satellite TVs are up; and a Middle East that is increasingly linked to the outside world and determined to live in peace.