Rumsfeld's Speech
Full disclosure: I knew three girls in high school whose mother worked for Donald Rumsfeld when we were in high school. They were friends of mine. I never met Rummy then, and I wouldn't want to meet him now. Maybe I pay a bit more attnetion to him because of his connection with friends of mine, and maybe I expect more from him. His speech at the American Legion convention shows, though, that he's become a full-fledged, dyed in the woll Bushieman (if there was any doubt.) First, he followed the Bushie pattern: Do something stupid, get caught, condemn the people who caught you, apologize. If you make the apology limp enough, people will think you're being needlessly kind. People may not notice that you really didn't apologize. The best example was Felix Allen's "apology" to S.R. Sidarth after calling him by a racial epithet. Felix said he was sorry if his words had caused any pain--or, in other words, he was sorry that Sidarth was so thin-skinned that he couldn't take what I'm sure Felix still considers a bit of locker room joking around.
Rummy screwed up to begin with when he compared the so-called War on Terror to World War II. There's no real basis for that comparison. World War II was a war among nations, some of which had imperial designs. The only nation that seems to have imperial designs in the War on Terror is the United States. In World War II, victory could be had by controlling territory or destroying the enemy's industrial system, command and control system, or government. Since terrorists don't have an industrial system or government, the only real ways to destroy them have to do with compromising their command and control systems or denying them the opportunity to spread their belief system and recruit new martyr wannabes. But the Bushiemen seem to think that we have to fight this war like World War II (The Big One), even though there are major differences that mean that we can't win it that way.
Imagine that you're an Iranian youth, 18 to 25. Things have sucked in your country for about as long as you can remember. Fun is pretty much illegal. Your government is trying to position your country to play in the big leagues by developing nuclear weapons(message to Asshole in the White House: The word is pronounced New clee er, not New cue ler. Get it right, you fucking moron. It takes about ten minutes of practice.) And the United States government is threatening your country for exercising sovereignty and developing weapons it considers necessary to its security. Look what the United States has done in Iraq. Let's see now. Blow up self and something else, preferably American, become a martyr, make Mom and Dad proud, get seventy virgins who exist to service you. It's enough to make a young guy sign up on the spot.
When Bushie took over, Arabs had only a few reasons to hate the United States. We had put our troops, including women, in the Land of the two Holy Places. We supported Israel unquestioningly. We supported repressive governments, some monarchies and some theocracies, both of which we profess to hate. It was possible, however, for a young Arab to think that there was no particular reason to hate the United States. We were pretty much leaving him and his country and his region alone. Maybe there were things that violated the beliefs of the strictest fundamentalists, but they were a little goofy anyway.
Now, we've turned Afghanistan into a battlefield. We've blown up big parts of Iraq, and what we've missed, those who hate us have taken care of in an effort to get us out. We supported Israel in destroying south Lebanon. Who should believe that if we don't fight them where they are now, we'll have to fight them in our own back yards later? Not the United States, but the Arab world.
We are not in agreement that the United States is in a war with terrorists, Rummy, you moron. You think that. I don't. While we were attacked in 2001, that attack actually accomplished a great deal. It seriously weakened the United States economy. It struck fear into those who were predisposed to be fearful or who want to eliminate every scintilla of risk from life. Some of the consequences for terrorists seemed pretty bad to westerners: Islamic countries were devastated in the American effort to "root out terrorism," but the reality is that destruction of a country doesn't matter much to Islamic terrorists. Their loyalty is to a belief system, not a country, and if one country is blown up, they move, comfortable in the knowledge that their enemies can't blanket the whole world to capture them. Bushie and his preppy wonks don't understand anything that's not white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and rich. If they ever had contact with anything else, they've long since forgotten it. And they never even listened to Dylan, "When you ain't got nothin'/You got nothin' to lose."
So Rummy, it's not a war. Victory in any sense pertaining to war is impossible. The only way to reduce the threat from terrorism is what you think of as appeasement. The only "victory" comes from deflating the attraction of the terrorists' rhetoric and ideology. That's tough to do when the ideology is rooted in religion, but it's still possible. And even religion rooted ideologies can die; look at Puritanism.
Rummy screwed up to begin with when he compared the so-called War on Terror to World War II. There's no real basis for that comparison. World War II was a war among nations, some of which had imperial designs. The only nation that seems to have imperial designs in the War on Terror is the United States. In World War II, victory could be had by controlling territory or destroying the enemy's industrial system, command and control system, or government. Since terrorists don't have an industrial system or government, the only real ways to destroy them have to do with compromising their command and control systems or denying them the opportunity to spread their belief system and recruit new martyr wannabes. But the Bushiemen seem to think that we have to fight this war like World War II (The Big One), even though there are major differences that mean that we can't win it that way.
Imagine that you're an Iranian youth, 18 to 25. Things have sucked in your country for about as long as you can remember. Fun is pretty much illegal. Your government is trying to position your country to play in the big leagues by developing nuclear weapons(message to Asshole in the White House: The word is pronounced New clee er, not New cue ler. Get it right, you fucking moron. It takes about ten minutes of practice.) And the United States government is threatening your country for exercising sovereignty and developing weapons it considers necessary to its security. Look what the United States has done in Iraq. Let's see now. Blow up self and something else, preferably American, become a martyr, make Mom and Dad proud, get seventy virgins who exist to service you. It's enough to make a young guy sign up on the spot.
When Bushie took over, Arabs had only a few reasons to hate the United States. We had put our troops, including women, in the Land of the two Holy Places. We supported Israel unquestioningly. We supported repressive governments, some monarchies and some theocracies, both of which we profess to hate. It was possible, however, for a young Arab to think that there was no particular reason to hate the United States. We were pretty much leaving him and his country and his region alone. Maybe there were things that violated the beliefs of the strictest fundamentalists, but they were a little goofy anyway.
Now, we've turned Afghanistan into a battlefield. We've blown up big parts of Iraq, and what we've missed, those who hate us have taken care of in an effort to get us out. We supported Israel in destroying south Lebanon. Who should believe that if we don't fight them where they are now, we'll have to fight them in our own back yards later? Not the United States, but the Arab world.
We are not in agreement that the United States is in a war with terrorists, Rummy, you moron. You think that. I don't. While we were attacked in 2001, that attack actually accomplished a great deal. It seriously weakened the United States economy. It struck fear into those who were predisposed to be fearful or who want to eliminate every scintilla of risk from life. Some of the consequences for terrorists seemed pretty bad to westerners: Islamic countries were devastated in the American effort to "root out terrorism," but the reality is that destruction of a country doesn't matter much to Islamic terrorists. Their loyalty is to a belief system, not a country, and if one country is blown up, they move, comfortable in the knowledge that their enemies can't blanket the whole world to capture them. Bushie and his preppy wonks don't understand anything that's not white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and rich. If they ever had contact with anything else, they've long since forgotten it. And they never even listened to Dylan, "When you ain't got nothin'/You got nothin' to lose."
So Rummy, it's not a war. Victory in any sense pertaining to war is impossible. The only way to reduce the threat from terrorism is what you think of as appeasement. The only "victory" comes from deflating the attraction of the terrorists' rhetoric and ideology. That's tough to do when the ideology is rooted in religion, but it's still possible. And even religion rooted ideologies can die; look at Puritanism.
posted by amsterdr at 9:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home