Posted on 03/18/2003 9:31:24 AM PST by knighthawk
A headline in Friday's Washington Post captures perfectly the Rumsfeld Effect: "Anti-U.S. Sentiment Abates in South Korea; Change Follows Rumsfeld Suggestion of Troop Cut."
"Change Follows Rumsfeld Suggestion": There's a slogan for the age, and fast becoming the First Law of Post-9/11 Geopolitics.
"The anti-American demonstrations here have suddenly gone poof," began the Post reporter in Seoul. "The official line from the South Korean government is: Yankees stay here."
What brought about this remarkable transformation? Why, a passing remark, an extemporaneous musing -- in other words, "a suggestion from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that U.S. troops may be cut and repositioned."
Other politicians sweat for weeks over a major 90-minute policy speech, hire the best writers, craft memorable phrases, and nobody notices. If you want to "re-shape the debate," as the cliché has it, all you need is a casual aside from Rummy. The concept of "old Europe" barely existed until Rumsfeld used it as a throwaway line a month-and-a-half ago. Within a week, it became the dominant regional paradigm. Belgium -- Old Europe. Bulgaria -- New Europe. The entire map of the continent suddenly fell into place for the first time since the Cold War. Even those who indignantly huffed about this unacceptable insult seemed unable to do so without confirming the truth of it: There was M. Chirac telling New Europe they'd missed a perfect opportunity to shut up. Instead, emboldened by Rummy, New Europe let rip.
Alas, last week Rummy's ruminations on rummy nations finally alighted, as they were bound to eventually, on the United Kingdom. The Defence Secretary made some mild remarks to the effect that, if Britain weren't able to participate in the war on Iraq, it wouldn't make much difference. Even some of his cheerleaders on the right thought this was a tad inconsiderate of Mr. Blair. And at the BBC they fell upon it deliriously as evidence that heartless old Rumsfeld would be happy to have Bush's poodle put down and served up at the South Korean farewell banquet with nary a thought: The Secretary, said correspondent Nick Assinder, had managed to "blow a series of holes in the Prime Minister's armour," he had "pulled the rug out" from beneath Blair's armoured feet, etc, etc.
But the thing is: He's not wrong, is he? Britain is helpful, but not necessary. And it would not be unreasonable if Rumsfeld, with a couple hundred thousand guys kicking their heels in the sand for six months, felt that America was being perhaps too deferential to the Prime Minister's domestic difficulties. After all, at what point does Britain's helpfulness cease to be helpful? There are no hard and fast rules, but when Baroness Amos, Britain's Minister for Africa, is chasing M. de Villepin around the dark continent because Guinea's presidential witchdoctor is advising against war (really), it's hard not to feel that, even by diplomatic standards, the whole thing has become too unmoored from reality.
That's Rumsfeld's function -- to take the polite fictions and drag them back to the real world. During the Afghan campaign, CNN's Larry King asked him, "Is it very important that the coalition hold?" The correct answer -- the Powell-Blair-Gore-Annan answer -- is, of course, "Yes." But Rummy decided to give the truthful answer: "No." He went on to explain why: "The worst thing you can do is allow a coalition to determine what your mission is." Such a man cannot be happy at the sight of the Guinean tail wagging the French rectum of the British hind quarters of the American dog.
Not everybody likes the Rumsfeldian approach. Germany was furious when Rummy lumped them with Libya and Cuba. Islamabad complained that he was "extremely callous" in offering Pakistanis serving with the Taliban two choices: "surrender or death." And even the Spanish Prime Minister felt obliged to suggest it might be better if Europe heard less of Rumsfeld and more of Colin Powell.
But it's hard to see why. Europe saw a lot of Colin Powell when he was negotiating Resolution 1441 with M. de Villepin, and a fat lot of good it did Washington. The present anti-Americanism in Europe doesn't distinguish between Mister Moderate and Rummy -- they're all crazed fundamentalist blood-for-oil warhawks. So you might as well give 'em the real thing and have a laugh, rather than sending Colin off to drone bromides about "my good friend Dominique" as the duplicitous French aristo stitches him up one more time.
For those who think world affairs can use a bracing shot of candour, Rumsfeld is the star of this war. At one Pentagon briefing on Afghanistan, some showboating reporter noted that human rights groups had objected to the dropping of cluster bombs and demanded to know why the U.S. was using them. "They're being used on frontline al-Qaeda and Taliban troops to try to kill them," replied Rumsfeld. It was a small indicator of a large cultural shift when NBC's Saturday Night Live introduced a weekly parody of his press conferences, mercilessly mocking not the politician but the dopey journalists.
Writing about Rummy after 9/11, I mentioned two salient facts: 1) He was the only Cabinet Secretary whose offices were attacked, who lost members of his staff and who helped pull the injured from the rubble; and 2) Before that date, he was widely seen as an anachronism -- not just a Bush Sr. retread like Cheney, but a Nixon/Ford throwback. The New York Times' elderly schoolgirl columnist Maureen Dowd mocked him as "Rip Van Rummy." In the last 18 months, she's become Rip Van Dowdy, and he's more relevant than ever. The comparison with Powell is instructive. Everyone understands that the State Department is institutionally problematic -- full of striped-pants appeasers who think the thing to do is roll over for the House of Saud and pass it off as realpolitik. But the Defence Department isn't ideal either -- Rummy inherited a bunch of Clintonian generals locked into an outmoded Cold War structure. The difference is that, unlike Powell, Rumsfeld's fixing the problem -- and, as The Washington Post would say, change is following.
When the Secretary of State was traipsing round the Middle East on his fool's mission last summer, the Defence Secretary (who served as Reagan's envoy to the region) was asked about the "occupied territories" and made you wish he'd been the one sent over to Yasser's boudoir: "My feeling about the so-called occupied territories," he replied, "is that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict."
"So-called occupied territories": There's one for Chris Patten, the EU's leading proponent of the theory of Yasserite inevitability. The Arabs would benefit from a little more straight talk: They're very bad at confronting the consequences of their recklessness. And that's one mistake Rumsfeld's never made, either at the Pentagon or in his pharmaceuticals business -- in both of which, as he points out, if you get it wrong, "people will die." Right now, on Old Europe, South Korea and much else, Rummy's getting it right. A few days after September 11th, he observed, "If you're going to cock it, you throw it." For the last year, we have had the world's longest cock. Let's throw.
Rumsfeld for Emperor!
Right on!!!! Powell always had a lot to bring to the table and his shafting by the French especially will make him a much more effective and conservative policy wonk when it comes to foreign affairs. I do believe he has learned much from the school of "hard knocks" when dealing with the Europeans especially.
Real people.
Real power.
Real results.
Candor Central. I like it.
With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense, to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume diplomatic relations.
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld’s December 19-20, 1983 visit to Baghdad made him the highest-ranking US official to visit Iraq in 6 years. He met Saddam and the two discussed “topics of mutual interest,” according to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. “[Saddam] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world,” Rumsfeld later told The New York Times. “It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems.”
Just 12 days after the meeting, on January 1, 1984, The Washington Post reported that the United States “in a shift in policy, has informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the 3-year-old war with Iran would be ‘contrary to U.S. interests’ and has made several moves to prevent that result.”
In March of 1984, with the Iran-Iraq war growing more brutal by the day, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad for meetings with then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. On the day of his visit, March 24th, UPI reported from the United Nations: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, a team of U.N. experts has concluded... Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz (sic) on the Gulf war before leaving for an unspecified destination.”
The day before, the Iranian news agency alleged that Iraq launched another chemical weapons assault on the southern battlefront, injuring 600 Iranian soldiers. “Chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs have been used in the areas inspected in Iran by the specialists,” the U.N. report said. “The types of chemical agents used were bis-(2-chlorethyl)-sulfide, also known as mustard gas, and ethyl N, N-dimethylphosphoroamidocyanidate, a nerve agent known as Tabun.”
Prior to the release of the UN report, the US State Department on March 5th had issued a statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.”
Commenting on the UN report, US Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick was quoted by The New York Times as saying, “We think that the use of chemical weapons is a very serious matter. We've made that clear in general and particular.”
Compared with the rhetoric emanating from the current administration, based on speculations about what Saddam might have, Kirkpatrick’s reaction was hardly a call to action.
Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department “evidence.” On the contrary, The New York Times reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, “American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.”
A month and a half later, in May 1984, Donald Rumsfeld resigned. In November of that year, full diplomatic relations between Iraq and the US were fully restored. Two years later, in an article about Rumsfeld’s aspirations to run for the 1988 Republican Presidential nomination, the Chicago Tribune Magazine listed among Rumsfeld’s achievements helping to “reopen U.S. relations with Iraq.” The Tribune failed to mention that this help came at a time when, according to the US State Department, Iraq was actively using chemical weapons.
Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan’s Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:
“First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters -- he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was approved.”
In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department—in the name of “increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”—pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam “transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military.”
In 1988, Saddam’s forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they “believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.”
In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House.
Senior officials later told reporters they did not press for punishment of Iraq at the time because they wanted to shore up Iraq's ability to pursue the war with Iran. Extensive research uncovered no public statements by Donald Rumsfeld publicly expressing even remote concern about Iraq’s use or possession of chemical weapons until the week Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, when he appeared on an ABC news special.
Eight years later, Donald Rumsfeld signed on to an “open letter” to President Clinton, calling on him to eliminate “the threat posed by Saddam.” It urged Clinton to “provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.”
In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world’s attention to Saddam’s chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had “available evidence” Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing.
Washington now speaks of Saddam’s threat and the consequences of a failure to act. Despite the fact that the administration has failed to provide even a shred of concrete proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda or has resumed production of chemical or biological agents, Rumsfeld insists that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
But there is evidence of the absence of Donald Rumsfeld’s voice at the very moment when Iraq’s alleged threat to international security first emerged. And in this case, the evidence of absence is indeed evidence.
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