Twice As Rice

Reports that U.S. President Barack Obama plans to name current U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as his next secretary of state have infuriated Republicans who continue to criticize her over inaccurate public statements made in the wake of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

But Washington infighting aside, Rice’s appointment would be unlikely to signal a major substantive policy shift from her predecessor Hillary Clinton — or even her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice. As the following statements make clear, Obama’s likely second-term secretary of state and George W. Bush’s second-term secretary of state share more than just a last name. See if you can tell them apart:

1. "It’s clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It’s clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that’s the path we’re on."

Answer 1: Susan

2. "The civil war in Syria may well be the last act in the story of the disintegration of the Middle East as we know it. The opportunity to hold the region together and to rebuild it on a firmer foundation of tolerance, freedom and, eventually, democratic stability is slipping from our grasp."

Answer 2: Condoleezza

3. "The United States has consulted Russia’s leaders. We have searched for common ground. And we have sought, as best we could, to take Russian interests and ideas into account. Increasingly, Russia’s leaders have not fully reciprocated."

Answer 3: Condoleezza

4. "America remains deeply and permanently committed to Israel’s peace and security. It is a commitment for this president and this Administration. It spans generations. It spans political parties. It is not negotiable. And it never will be."

Answer 4: Susan

5. "It has been hard to muster the resources to support fledgling democracies — or to help the world’s most desperate — the AIDS orphan in Uganda, the refugee fleeing Zimbabwe, the young woman who has been trafficked into the sex trade in Southeast Asia; the world’s poorest in Haiti.   Yet this assistance, together with the compassionate works of private charities — people of conscience and people of faith — has shown the soul of our country."

Answer 5: Condoleezza

6. "Our founders believed that they were creating a nation that would secure life, liberty, and prosperity for all Americans. At the same time, our nation would also stand together with all other people against tyranny, inequality, and injustice."

Answer 6: Susan

7. "The situation in Libya is very complex and it’s difficult. I think no one would have wanted to see Colonel Qaddafi massacre his people, Just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean that you can sit on the sidelines."

Answer 7: Condoleezza

8. "As you know, we’re living in times of amazing change. Across the Middle East and North Africa, from Libya to Syria to Yemen, brave demonstrators are standing up for their universal human rights. The fragile new nation of South Sudan is preparing to be born in great uncertainty about its security and borders in less than a month. Justice has finally caught up to Osama bin Laden and Ratko Mladic. Democracy is gaining fresh energy in Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, Egypt, as well as Tunisia. And we’re all being challenged to break out of old habits and find new answers to 21st-century challenges."

Answer 8: Susan

9. "Iran is definitely part of the problem in Syria. It is supporting, aiding, and abetting the Assad regime materially and in many other ways, and it has shown no readiness to contribute constructively. And so we have taken the view that because it has contributed on the negative side of the ledger so profoundly and shown no readiness to employ whatever influence it has to persuade the Syrian regime to stop the violence, that it is not at this point prepared to play a constructive role."

Answer 9: Susan

10. "In 2003, the United States created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR — the largest international response to a single disease that any country has ever mounted. When PEPFAR was launched, fewer than 50,000 people in all of sub-Saharan Africa had access to treatment. By September 2010, PEPFAR had supported treatment for more than 3.2 million people, the vast majority of them in Africa. Today, more than 3.8 million orphans and vulnerable children also receive PEPFAR support that gives them education, nutrition, and a chance for a better life."

Answer 10: Susan

11. "[T]he worst case, which seems unfortunately at the present to be the most probable. And that is that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies, it reaches a higher degree of severity, it involves countries in the region, it takes on increasingly sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the region."

Answer 11: Susan

12. "There is a tendency in foreign policy to want to have a very simple way of thinking about every relationship. It’s either an alliance, a relationship of friends or an adversarial one."

Answer 12: Condoleezza

13. "[P]oor and fragile states can incubate threats that spread far beyond their borders — terrorism, pandemic disease, nuclear proliferation, criminal networks, climate change, genocide, and more. In our interconnected age, a threat to development anywhere is a threat to security everywhere."

Answer 13: Susan

14. "Time and time again we would see this. China would stir up nationalist sentiment in the population through the state-controlled media, diminishing its own room for maneuver as it reacted to the very passions it had created."

Answer 14: Condoleezza