One article discussing Madeleine Albrlght says: "Albright experienced evil as a child living in Prague under the Nazis and then the Communists.   She believes we have a choice: 'to live in fear or in faith and boldness.'"

She herself has said, "When I was an infant, Nazi stormtroopers marched into my native Czechoslovakia.   After the war, my nation was taken over by Communists. So I learned early in life that there is much evil in this world."   (Let's overlook the fact that when she said this there was no country Czechoslovakia and that during the brief period there was one, very few natives would ever describe their home of origin as "Czechoslovakia.")

During the most recent presidential campaign Albright had a few choice words in support of John Kerry's candidacy:

"in recent years, we have seen arise a new and evil tide-terrorism."

"America is a champion of liberty, prosperity, and peace.   John Kerry knows that it is not enough just to say that America wants to defeat terror and rid the world of evil.   Wanting something is not the same as doing something."

Today Madeleine Korbel Albright says in a letter to the LA Times:

"Good versus evil isn't a strategy

... It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad.   It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction ... Bush may have thought he was striking a blow for good over evil, but the forces unleashed were considerably more complex ... In the long term, the future of the Middle East may well be determined by those in the region dedicated to the hard work of building democracy.   I certainly hope so.   But hope is not a policy. In the short term, we must recognize that the region will be shaped primarily by fairly ruthless power politics in which the clash between good and evil will be swamped by differences between Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Persian, Arab and Kurd, Kurd and Turk, Hashemite and Saudi, secular and religious and, of course, Arab and Jew."

So which is it Mrs. Albright?   Do you think of the world as consisting of both good and evil forces as you professed for most of your life including your tenure with the Clinton Administration or should we view things in a more nuanced way and eschew such simplistic terms as good and evil?   Is that not precisely what we tried to do with Germany around the year 1938?   We saw two sides of a complex debate over whether the Sudetenland was German or not?   We considered the point of view of a rising leader who was simply trying to bring his people back to the community of nations.   We understood that he was merely trying to protect poor unfortunate Germans living under non-German governance and suffering as a result.   We bowed to his demands and understood where he was coming from.   He was, through the prism of history, evil and that specific accomodations cost tens of millions of lives!

So you tell us, Mrs. Former Secretary, did you grow up in evil or were you merely the victim of confusion caused by differing systems of values, beliefs (organic nationalism), and governance (communism, nazism) innocently imposed upon you by members of different ethnic groups (Russians, Germans)?