I just read the transcript of Condoleezza Rice’s remarks in Cairo. She didn’t mention Ayman Nour once. After he lost his unprecedented election challenge to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian regime arrested him. Arsonists burned down his party’s headquarters. He remains in prison. She didn’t mention the cancellation of municipal elections. Rice says, “Democracy is not something that … is for America to impose abroad. And certainly democracy will look — will take on different cultural tones, different forms, in every single country on earth.” This is the same sort of rhetoric that China and Iran use to explain why Chinese and Iranian human rights are different than ordinary human rights, and to explain why their one-party dictatorships are really misunderstood democracies. When I was in Cairo two weeks ago, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, the Egyptian finance minister, spoke of how Mubarak’s regime only had two more years to out wait Bush administration pressures for reform. And this is the man whom people in the Bush administration say is their sincere friend? I’m curious whether Rice can point to a single diplomatic success under her tenure; I’m not sure I can, but I can certainly point to reversals of first term successes, even limited Egyptian reform first and foremost among them.