(Headline USA) Despite a tenure blighted by callous indifference to the suffering of some countries and brutal, imperialist aggression toward others, globalist elites and members of the Washington, DC Establishment gathered Wednesday to celebrate the legacy of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Appropriately, the aftershock of her warped American exceptionalism was still being felt in America’s latest iteration of the endless war, as it funnels an unlimited supply of resources into Ukraine, where many see the corrupt government functioning as a defacto money-laundering operation for US interventionalists within the Democrat power system.
As a result of President Joe Biden’s mix of foreign-policy ineptitude and warmongering rhetoric, the world now seems to be on the brink of nuclear catastrophe for the first time since the Cold War ended, shortly before Albright’s stint as the nation’s top diplomat.
On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and one month before her death, the New York Times printed what would be Albright’s last published writing. She wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion would be a “historic error” that would cement his legacy as one of “infamy.”
In his eulogy, former President Bill Clinton recalled in his final conversation with Albright that she didn’t want to talk about her declining health at a moment when the West is on edge following Russia’s invasion.
Albright, Clinton recalled, assured him in that conversation about two weeks before she died last month, that she was getting the best care she could, but didn’t want to “waste time” talking about that.
“The only thing that really matters is what kind of world we’re going to leave to our grandchildren,” Clinton recalled Albright told him. He added, “She made a decision with her last breath she would go out with her boots on.”
Led by President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Clinton, some 1,400 mourners gathered to celebrate her life and accomplishments of the child refugee from war-torn Europe who rose to become America’s first female secretary of state.
Albright died of cancer last month at age 84, prompting an outpouring of condolences from around the world. Besides the current and former presidents, the service was attended by at least three of her successors as secretary of state, along with other current and former Cabinet members, foreign diplomats, lawmakers and an array of others who knew her.
Biden, who delivered a tribute to Albright, said her name was synonymous with the idea that America is “a force for good in the world.”
“In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright,” Biden said. “Today we honor a truly proud American who made all of us prouder to be Americans.”
Hillary Clinton urged her husband to tap Albright to serve as secretary of state, a role that Clinton would serve in herself during the Obama administration. The two developed a strong friendship over the years.
Clinton in her own tribute recalled some lighter memories of Albright, including the time she danced the night away with a young, handsome man at her daughter Chelsea’s wedding, a previous gathering of global elites that included on its guest list accused pedophile pimp Ghislaine Maxwell.
“The angels better be wearing their best pins and putting on their dancing shoes,” Clinton said. “Because if as Madeleine believed there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women, they haven’t seen anyone like her yet.”
The crowd that gathered at Washington National Cathedral to honor Albright included the current secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and former secretaries Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry were slated to attend.
Other top current officials expected to be present included Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA Director Bill Burns, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Foreign dignitaries invited to the funeral included the presidents of Georgia and Kosovo and senior officials from Colombia, Bosnia and the Czech Republic.
Albright was an internationalist whose point of view was shaped in part by her background. Her family fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 as the Nazis took over their country, and she spent the war years in London.
As a Czech refugee who saw the horrors of both Nazi Germany and the Iron Curtain, she was not a dove. She played a leading role in pressing for the Clinton administration to get involved militarily in the conflict in Kosovo.
“My mindset is Munich,” she said frequently, referring to the German city where the Western allies abandoned her homeland to the Nazis.
As secretary of state, Albright played a key role in persuading Clinton to go to war against the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic over his treatment of Kosovar Albanians in 1999.
As U.N. ambassador, she advocated a tough U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the case of Milosevic’s treatment of Bosnia. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was eventually dubbed “Madeleine’s War.”
However, that military hardline also included turning a blind eye to genocide in places like Rwanda and Iraq, where the Clinton administration offered aid and comfort to brutal dictator Saddam Hussein.
She also attempted to block a Congressional action to recognize Turkey’s Armenian genocide, citing poor timing of the bill.
And on her watch, Osama bin Laden was able to grow the al-Qaeda terrorist network that would, shortly thereafter, commit the deadliest attack on American soil since the Civil War, permanently redefining America’s global outlook in the process.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
