Rumsfeld’s 1950s-style unilateralism is out of touch with the way the world works
Nov. 3 issue — I can’t help it. I like Donald Rumsfeld and I like his sharp elbows. I like the way he spars with reporters and tries to cut through all the Beltway gunk. Of course he probably should have been fired last summer for incompetence. His “plan” for postwar Iraq, if one can call it that, was beyond inadequate: his failure to secure key installations with military police, his politicizing of intelligence, his insulting of allies and his arrogant insistence on phony estimates of the cost of securing and rebuilding the country all will cloud his reputation. If he’d bothered to read a State Department report about the occupation, he could have saved scores of lives and billions of dollars. But that was then. The question about Rumsfeld now isn’t whether he’ll be brought low by his high-handedness. He ain’t going anywhere. It’s whether he is a supple enough thinker to adjust to the modern world as it is, not as he demands it should be.
REMEMBER “RUMMY’S RULES”? These were the maxims (e.g., “It is easier to get into something than to get out of it” ) that he assembled over more than 35 years in various high-level positions. One of them is this: “Visit with your predecessors from previous administrations. Try to make original mistakes rather than repeating theirs.”
Among those Rumsfeld has visited with is Robert S. McNamara, another slicked-back secretary of Defense with troops pinned down in a foreign land. McNamara won’t second-guess Rumsfeld publicly, but we got to talking last week about this whole matter of lessons and rules. “The Fog of War,” a new documentary about McNamara by the brilliant filmmaker Errol Morris (who did “The Thin Blue Line”), is structured as a series of lessons from McNamara. This device mars an otherwise wrenching and provocative work because most of the “lessons” are written by Morris, not McNamara, which isn’t quite clear in the film. But it turns out that McNamara does have some lessons—some mistakes —from the Vietnam era that Rumsfeld should heed.
An example of rabid leftwing pack journalist media bias would not be complete without a piece by Mr. Alter.
Do you remember election night 2000 where Alter was envisioning scenarios in which the demos could overturn the Florida vote that went to Bush? He's a stealth bomb thrower.
They want him fired because he's so good. We're winning and they know it. BTW, they misspelled the magazine's name. It's NEWSWEAK.
What the hell's up with Newsweak? This is like the third hit piece going after Rummy. It is so obvious the fear that these liberals have of this guy and they are out to destroy him.
This is why I just can't buy that this was an intentional leak by Rummy. He would've had to know the furry this would stir up regardless of what "spin" he or the administration wanted to make of it. Every news paper/magazine has been headlining this story for the past couple days now, and using it as a pretext to get rid of him. If it was intentional, it was a strategic mistake.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1008337/posts FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum"
Is there ANY evil that they won't blame on Bush?
The Star ^ | Sunday 26 October | Michael Bowers
Posted on 10/26/2003 6:12 AM PST by mjbowers
Is there any evil that they don't blame on Bush?
Sunday, October 26, 2003
By Michael J. Bowers
Star columnist
The hate just never stops.
Now it's George Bush's fault that the prime minister of Malaysia is an anti-Semitic bigot.
This is what Paul Krugman, the leader of the Republican-haters on the New York Times opinion page, believes.
In case you missed it, a couple of weeks ago, the prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, told an Islamic summit meeting: "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today, the Jews rule this world by proxy: They get others to fight and die for them."
To make it worse, Mohamad got a standing ovation from 57 Muslim leaders.
This hate was astonishing enough. I didn't think it could be topped. But I underestimated the ability of Paul Krugman. He topped it.
Krugman says you really can't blame Mahathir; Bush made him do it!
Here's how Krugman explained it on Tuesday morning:
"Mr. Mahathir thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform. That tells you, more accurately than any poll, just how strong the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Muslims in Southeast Asia has become.
"Thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9-11 sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low."
Is there anything at all in the world that the Bush-haters will not blame on the president?
Krugman is one of many such haters on the Left. Eight years ago, Nina Totenberg, a reporter for NPR, as much as wished doom upon Sen. Jesse Helms.
"If there is retributive justice," she said during a heated radio discussion, "he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it."
Now Totenberg is back with a similar sentiment for Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin. The general's sin? He described the war on terrorism as akin to a war on Satan.
Now I believe some of the things Boykin said were a little nutty. But I also believe it was hard not to see something Satanic in the images of the condemned workers peering out the windows of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
But seeing evil in wanton murder is too rigid and fundamentalist for good people like Totenberg. She said of the general: "I hope he's not long for this world."
When people who heard her were taken aback, she backpedaled. "In his job, in his job, in his job, please, please, in his job!" she said.
Thanks, Nina. That makes it all better.
Earlier this summer, I wrote about the Left's hatred for all things Bush, and so I have hesitated to bring it up again lest I be guilty of repetitiveness.
But this week, I can't rein myself. The hate just gets more and more offensive.
For example, in September, Jonathan Chait, a writer for The New Republic, wrote a remarkable piece explaining why he hates President Bush. Some of his friends, Chait said, describe Bush's very existence as a "constant oppressive force in their daily psyche." Chait can't even stand the way Bush talks or walks.
Is this hatred normal? Or are we approaching the edge of insanity here?
Not only do the Bush-haters hate, they also lie.
For instance, a couple of months ago, President Bush stated there was no evidence of a close link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The press bit into his leg like a pit bull and hasn't let go yet. They keep saying gleefully that Bush "admitted" no link.
But this loaded word makes it a lie, because Bush never said there was a link. We didn't knock out Saddam because the dictator plotted 9-11; we knocked him out because we want to create a stable, democratic Middle East that won't birth more fanaticism and terror.
Another thing the haters complain about is that Bush sold the war as a response to an "imminent" threat. He lied, they cry — Iraq was never an imminent threat.
Again, those who accuse Bush of lying are lying themselves. Bush never said the threat was imminent. In fact, in his State of the Union address, he said just the opposite:
"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."
And then there's the report by weapons inspector David Kay to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
According to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican who attended the closed briefing, Kay said he had found no actual weapons of mass destruction. But this was only a small part of the report. Kay also outlined what had been a vigorous, extensive and frightening effort by Saddam to gain such weapons.
For instance, said the senator, "Kay found a prison laboratory complex that might have been used to test biowarfare agents on humans, unmanned aerial vehicle and missile technology banned by the United Nations, and equipment for uranium enrichment that could have helped restart Iraq's nuclear weapons program once sanctions were lifted."
Chambliss was shocked when he woke up the next day to headlines such as: "No evidence of Iraq WMD programs found."
Pathetically, the Bush-haters can dish it out, but they can't take it. Whenever a conservative says something even remotely skeptical of the motives of the Left, they go into a rage about Republican "mean-spiritedness."
It boggles the mind. Do these people ever read their own newspapers? And have they never heard the awful things said by the likes of Bill Moyers, Bob Herbert and Michael Moore?
Did they miss the recent "Boondocks" strip in which the cartoonist had our wonderful and brilliant national security adviser, Condi Rice, destroying the planet because she can't get a boyfriend?
Today's Bush-haters: Never before have I seen a group of such mean, nasty bullies pretend to be the victim of such meanness, nastiness and bullying.
Michael Bowers is a copy editor for The Star. He can be reached via e-mail at
mbowers@starnewspapers.com.
ditto...
Talking about assumptions from contorted desperate minds of the fourth column, who are so easily mutating naturally into the VOICE of an American fifth column :)
I see this especially in earlier postings from today about their articles regarding our real beauty "Rummy" the Rod. I'm sure you've noticed how they think in their own form of pure horse manure that he's a burden to Gorgeous George in the next election.
However, the only question that remains in my mind as far as the next election is concerned is whether Rummy helps George to get a 49 or 50 state runaway for the President Of The United States Of America.
What makes perfect sense to me, and that's real horse sense, is that 95% of the fourth estate, who are finally, clearly, evolving in Time (and alter's Newsweek) are indeed "coming out" for what they are. The mutating looks like it's finally over and at last we hear the fourth estate speak clearly their A.N.S.W.E.R.
With the best regards to all and sundry
Other than X42 and Janet Reno, McNamara is the worst public official of the last 100 years. The only thing I want to hear from him is an abject apology.