Taking off from Condoleezza Rice's egregious comment that this nation remains malformed by what she calls its national "birth defect" (the existence of slavery at the time of its founding), I realized in writing today's column why the RIce Doctrine--a vision of the world, in all its historical and cultural variation, through a provincially American prism of race--has been such a failure. Baghdad and Gaza aren't Birmingham.

Meant to link to previous writings on Rice, briefly mentioned in today's column:

Here is a 2005 column on Condi's apparent inabiity to distinguish between the blueprint for freedom that is the 18th-century US Constitution and the blueprint for sharia that is 21st century Iraqi one; and here is a 2007 post that more fully examines her projection of "Bombingham" onto the so-called MIddle East peace process.