[Opinion] Warrior Princess

Dark-skin, shiny eyes, intelligent, tough and attractive – it’s not about Lara Croft, an sexy female warrior from video game `Tom Raider.` It’s about Condoleezza Rice, U.S. national security advisor. `Tomb Raider` character-like female warriors have been in movies like `Matrix` and `Enough,` and now there is one in the White House. She is nicknamed a warrior princess and at the very center of the Bush administration’s war planning against Iraq.

▷Like the pop culture character that is sexy by being tough, Condi’s (or Condoleezza) charm lies in contradictory nature. The weekly magazine Newsweek called her influence `Quite Power` in its latest edition. She is a hawk who hardly hesitates to call North Korea an axis of evil, but tidies up cups when a White House meeting is over. Once she asked Secretary of State Colin Powel to help her with cups, but Powel said, ˝Men don’t do that.˝ She then replied back, ˝A real man can just do that.˝ She is more manlike than men but still remains very womanish. It’s as if she transcends the boundary between men and women. As the first descendant of African salves leading the National Security Council, she says, ˝I don’t think African Americans must be paid compensations for the slavery in the past.˝ She does not bind herself into the past and the skin color.

▷By not confining herself to limits, she is moving fast forward. Like George W. Bush who believes there is nothing impossible, she has religious faith that she can do it anything. What’s most extraordinary about her, however, is that she never abuses her power. Full of patriotism that puts national interests ahead of anything else, she never sways the president with her private opinion. That’s why she is a heroic warrior and a princess fully trusted by the president.

▷She might be content with being a princess for now, but no one can guarantee that she will be happy ever after loved by the king. To be born again as a true heroine, she must become an independent being away from the king’s influence. She needs to leave home and build her own weapons for a fight. ˝A war is like football,˝ she one said that she wants to be the president of the National Football Association someday, implying her desire to fight and seek power. It will be as interesting as playing a video game to watch whether she will be able to run for presidency in 2008 to become the nation’s first female president.

Kim Soon-deok, Editorial Writer, yuri@donga.com