Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not always be the most endearing personality. However, he's spot on when he says those people who want to "blame America first" suffer from "moral or intellectual confusion." You can't get much more plain spoken than that.
There really are too many people that seem willing to believe some absolutely bizarre theories about how America has brought the tragedy of terrorism on itself. The latest craze (and I mean craze literally) is that America staged the 9/11 attacks. Give me a break, there is absolutely no reason why the government would do it and the numerous cell phone calls from plane passengers gave us first hand evidence of what was actually happening.
Then there are those who focus on US mistakes such as Haditha and Abu Ghraib. Well even Rumsfeld acknowledges that mistakes are made in every war, but to focus on these in absence of the larger, just mission is at best myopic and at worst dishonest.
My personal favourite line of reasoning for the anti-war crowd is "it's all about oil." Umm hello, have you seen gas prices these past few years? The best way to secure cheap oil is to cozy up with dictators who are desperate to sell the stuff to pay for their corrupt lifestyles. That's what the French were doing with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and to a lesser extent that's what America's doing with Saudi Arabia and others. The war could never be about oil, because America would always have access to it anyway.
The war in Iraq was only ever about the war on terror and it was the most reasonable response to a dictator that claimed to have weapons of mass destruction and seemed only to keen to use them. Rumsfeld's description of those opposed to the war on terror as confused is apt enough. Unfortunately with so many hair-brained conspiracy theories being talked about in the media and docudramas, there is some cause for confusion.
However, when it comes to those on the left and in the media who are promoting some of these theories, Rumsfeld is being far too charitable.
2 comments:
A group of Democrats in the U.S. Congress wish to replace Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld because he is one of the more intelligent people in Washington. He has conducted a rather brilliant military action that has lost less than 3,000 lives a war that is in its fourth year. A rough third of those deaths have been in vehicular accidents. During the same time The U.S. has lost over 120,000 lives on our highways, (42,884 in 2003, 42, 636 in 2004, 43,200 in 2005,) the majority of those deaths in the same age bracket that serves in Iraq. Congress does nothing about the highway carnage and criticizes Donald Rumsfeld, who has actually accomplished something. With the action in Iraq the Islamic-fascists are focused on attacking our military there, not at home in the US. Proof is in the fact that five years later we have not had a homeland attack. This does not say that it could not happen, but there is a disparity in the media and political attacks on Rumsfeld and the reality.
There is no question operations could have been handled differently in Iraq. My preference would have been a firmer hand when we first went in, such as using the Geneva Conventions to shoot on the spot any out of uniform combatants hiding in the civilian population. Another step would have been enacting martial law with a sunset curfew shooting anything that moved after curfew. The U.S. is too soft at a time when it needed to use a page from the Israelis – they do not mess around with ‘political correctness” or wanting or assuming that a populace likes them.
The criticism of our security forces and the exposure of the techniques that data-mine and trace financial transactions are treasonous acts, as they aid and abet the enemy.
Thanks for this. Very informative, and I appreciate you stopping by. Do you write your own blog?
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