I completely agree with Mitch Berg, no way in hell should Donald Rumsfeld be removed from his position. He wasn’t responsible for the horrible events at the Abu Ghraib prison, and he’s shown that he’s willing to deal with the situation in a responsible manner. Yes, heads should roll, but calling for Rumsfeld’s head is nothing short of a partisan political maneuver. Even frequent Rumsfeld critic Donald Sensing says that blaming Rumsfeld is a dodge.
This is something that should be deeper than election-year pissing contests, but the Democrats seem all too eager to take out Rumsfeld and let the rest of the issue drop. It’s another example of why the Democrats are foolishly putting petty partisanship above critical matters of national security.
Rumsfeld has made some awful mistakes (no, you can’t pacify a country of 25 million people in the most hostile region in the world with only 150,000 troops), but in some ways he has a better idea of what he’s doing than a lot of people in the Bush administration or his own staff. And he’s certainly not to blame for the prison incedent, which seems more like a case of bored soldiers gone wild than any bureaucratic error.
I’m tired of this “dump on Rumsfeld” attitude of the Dems/Libs. I think they just don’t like a strong leader of our military, especially one who speaks as candidly as he does.
I’m also tired of the myth that Rumsfeld has so messed up in postwar Iraq. There were going to be problems no matter what…it is unrealistic to think that there was some magic formula for reconstructing Iraq that would have eliminated all problems.
Regarding the comment from a previous post:
“you can’t pacify a country of 25 million people in the most hostile region in the world with only 150,000 troops”
Response: It sounds so nice to juxtapose those two figures: 25 million people and only 150,000 troops — but if 150,000 is inadequate for 25 million, then what number is adequate? Would 200,000 actually be that much closer to the population of 25 million? Or are you suggesting we need to send in at least something close to the 25 million (which of course would not be possible)?
Also, it is not really the responsibility of the troops to “pacify” the entire population of 25 million. Their responsibility is, among other things, to preserve a framework of societal order while the transition to Iraqi self-government is made. This means they only have to subdue the small numbers of terrorists which are there and are already far outnumbered by our military force.
The problem when fighting terrorist action is usually not numbers, but intelligence. Imagine trying to find 10 people in the state of California. Without some good intelligence, it really wouldn’t matter if you had 10 or 100 or 100 or even 10,000 people on your team looking for those 10.
The point is that it is so easy to armchair quarterback. No amount of troops can “pacify” a population of 25 million…ultimately, that will be the choice of the Iraqis.
And the Libs always talk about how we didn’t lose any troops in the occupations of Germany and Japan. The reason being was that we had already killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers, so there was nobody left with the will to fight. If the libs wanted us to fight this war like that we probably wouldn’t have any resistance left. However, then they would bitch about the tremendous loss of civilian life. Catch 22
The situation in Iraq is not so bad. Sure there are problems. But anyone who expected the postwar reconstruction to go smoothly was living in fantasy land.
All reconstruction efforts have had their ups and downs. This was true in post-WWII Europe and Japan, and true even during reconstruction in America after the Civil War.
The media has done a great job playing up the problems and hardly giving any press to all of the amazing good we have done in that country in such a short period of time. If Clinton had been president the media spin would have been entirely different and so would the public impression.
It’s just like watching the local news in any city in America. Watch any local newscast and if you go on that alone you will get the impression that the city is a hotbed of crime, corruption, government incompetence, and personal tragedy. Of course, we know that not to be so…certainly most of our American cities are fine places. But the point is that the media in this country is really all tabloid media…all focused on the sensational and the negative, rather than giving a balanced picture of reality. The only difference is that the supermarket tabloid peddles one type of tragedy, while newspapers like the NY Times peddles another. However, their motivation and bias is really the same: tell a lurid and sensational story.
The RAND Corporation did a study, and they recommended 500,000 troops as a baseline for reconstruction.
I think that our forces were perfectly adaquate to take over Iraq – they did so in record time. However, I agree that we don’t have as many boots on the ground as we need to keep the peace. We can’t rely on foreign troops to do so, since they don’t have enough to make a real difference and many of them didn’t want to help in the first place. (France, Germany, and Russia being the big three examples). We have to rely heavily on the Iraqis being willing and able to bear some of the load. There are signs this is happening, but not as fast or as well as we might like.
What Rumsfeld has been doing is trying to challenge the military into reforming itself – challenging the generals and trying to break up the old order. He’s facing a lot of resistance, which is a problem, but if another bureaucrat were in his place there would be *no* impetus to reform.
We just can’t afford that now. Rumsfeld is absolutely the right man for the job, and losing him would be a national disaster.
Sometimes I wonder if we would have had the will to win WWII if the modern television era had been upon us.
It seems that with a liberal media coupled with technology that can instantly transmit harsh images around the globe, that the expectations are set unrealistically such that there is no tolerance of any loss or setback or imperfection.
It’s almost like every war has to be like Gulf War I, where it’s over with so fast that no one has time to notice what’s gone wrong or any losses.
The problem is this: what do you do when you have to fight a war, and this war will at times be somewhat messy and will not be over with in microwave time?
As Americans I believe this election year is a crucial test of our will. Will we stay the course and do whatever is necessary to triumph and stick with Bush, or will we back down and elect Kerry?
There is no doubt that if Kerry wins that would be perceived around the world by terrorists and rogue leaders as a good thing and a sign that America is losing its will to fight.
“There is no doubt that if Kerry wins that would be perceived around the world by terrorists and rogue leaders as a good thing and a sign that America is losing its will to fight.” What a powerful quote. I sincerely hope that does not happen.
Chris: we all have to work very hard to make sure that Pres Bush is reelected and that Kerry does not become president.
Kerry as president would be tantamount to national surrender.
I heard Senator Dayton on KFAN following his embarrassing performance in the hearing where he was more concerned about the possible “suppression” of the photographs then he was about endangering the troops in Iraq or our broader battle against terrorism. He thinks we need less troops in Iraq, not more, because more troops, in his reality, would lead to more violence and more incidents like Abu Ghraib. What an idiot. He might be the one member of the Senate with less sense than John F’ing Kerry
Now I’m hearing Hugh Hewitt just tear Dayton a new one in his opening monologue.
Anybody But Dayton in ’06
The real problem with Rumsfeld is that he was aware of the “abuses” for months, but wasn’t shocked at all (until the whole world was). He should have launch some inquiries, try to clean the mess when it was possible. Instead, he just decided to wait, allowing more abuses to be committed. This is a terrible mistake, and for that, he should definitely resign. He is responsible.