Growing up in Birmingham Alabama, Condoleezza Rice watched her father carry a shotgun to protect against armed vigilantes who terrorized the neighbourhood. (According to the book "Condi", by Antonia Felix.) In Birmingham, police would clear the streets to facilitate the Klu Klux Klan making threatening demonstrations against black skinned people, instead of protecting them.

Today Rice is a U.S. government official faced with aggressors and terrorists like Iran and al Qaeda, representing a religious movement that is oppressive and nihilist, in a world where the United Nations facilitates tyrants. (Naming their countries to head committees like human rights, and talking instead of acting to prevent genocide in Africa, for example. The closest the world has to a police force is the strong military of the United States of America.)

In Birmingham, perhaps the shotguns of her father and neighbours were enough to intimidate attackers in the absence of an honest police force but within the limits of national outrage if attacks on black-skinned persons became widespread. But on September 15, 1963, a friend was killed by the bombing of a church in Birmingham. She attended the funeral, remembering the coffins long afterward. So she saw first-hand that terrorists could still attack. (National attention was aroused by that bombing and by police action against demonstrators (most of them from poor black areas, whereas Rice's father counselled against marching). That nation took action to force desegregation.)

While living in Birmingham, the intelligent child Condoleezza Rice was also concerned about Soviet missiles in Cuba, recognizing that the South was within range of attackers that her father's shotgun could not protect against.

Today societies with relative freedom compared to much of the world but less than the US and like countries are within the range of missiles from the oppressive regimes of Iran and North Korea, who are trying to develop nuclear weapons for the missiles to carry. The Iranian regime in particular advocates subjugation or anihilation of anyone who does not strictly follow their interpretation of the Islamic belief system, thus is a future threat to the U.S., not just its friends today.

Clearly Condoleeza Rice knows first hand the terror and killing perpetrated by evil people when not stopped by a proper justice system, and as a child recognized the limitations of defense by foot soldiers with guns. Much of the world today is like Birmingham Alabama when Rice was a young child.

Why then is Rice so weak against evil in the world today?

Ultimately the question should be asked by Rice herself, of herself. She needs to take a hard long look in her mirror and ask herself why she avoids action against regimes that oppress women and movements who kill those they despise, as in the Deep South years ago - history she must remember.

(Yes, she supported the decision to invade Iraq again. But she appears to be working hard to avoid taking strong action against sources of terrorism and attack, such as Iran and Syria/Lebanon, and fuddles along on the mess in Palestine.)

(One thing to note is that she was taught growing up to stick to her beliefs that she could succeed. That's a very good maxim, but has some risk of sticking to the wrong course of action for too long.
She has demonstrated ability to be confrontational when appropriate, such as when a secret service agent tried to block her from a meeting on the assumption she was not one of the group.

According to an article by Tyler Marshall et al in the Los Angles Times (reprinted in the Everett Herald of Novermber 21, 2004) she is good at mirroring her boss' beliefs but is not a synchophant, not appearing to have a different agenda but good at promoting her case.)

David Frum's current theory, in the National Post of May 30, 2008, is "Had Bush been a more active manager, these subordinated personalities might have done him less harm. But after choosing people he could dominate, he then delegated them enormous power. He created a closed loop in which the people entrusted with the most responsibility were precisely those who most dreaded responsibility — Condoleezza Rice being the most important and most damaging example…."