Full-Speed Ahead?

Lawrence Eagleburger just said on Fox that he expects that Gates was selected precisely because he won’t change course in Iraq. This interview with a former close colleague of Gates, Fritz W. Ermarth, suggests the same. I sure hope they’re wrong. It looks to me like Daddy’s friends are bailing out "the boy" again. Well, at least someone is. At this point, I’ll take anyone not clinically delusional.

Rumsfeld Shrugs

Rumsfeldmandelnganafpgetty

This was the final insult – to you and to me:

In brief remarks, Rumsfeld described the Iraq conflict as a "little understood, unfamiliar war" that is "complex for people to comprehend."

He then compared himself to Churchill. Yep: still clinical. The truth is: it was Rumsfeld who little understood and was unfamiliar with the actual conflict he was tasked with managing. It was not too "complex for people to comprehend." It was relatively easy to comprehend. If you invade a post-totalitarian country and disband its military, you better have enough troops to keep order. We didn’t. Rumsfeld refused to send enough. When this was made clear to him and to everyone, he still refused. His arrogant belief in a military that didn’t need any actual soldiers was completely at odds with the actual task in Iraq. But he preferred to sit back as tens of thousands of Iraqis were murdered and thousands of U.S. troops died rather than to check his own ego.

So let me put this as simply as I can: Rumsfeld has blood on his hands – American and Iraqi blood. He also directly ordered and personally monitored the torture of military detainees. He secured legal impunity for his own war crimes, but that doesn’t mean the Congress shouldn’t investigate more fully what he authorized. He remains one of the most incompetent defense secretaries in history (McNamara looks good in comparison). But he is also a war criminal: a torturer who broke the laws of this country. The catastrophe in Iraq will stain him for ever. His record of torture has indelibly stained the United States.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

Bitter, Party of One

Bushbrookskraftcorbisfortime_3

Watching the president’s press conference, we have finally gotten to see what happens when George W. Bush is forced to face reality. It wasn’t pretty. He was prickly from the word go, defensive, and also revealing. He was trying to say (I think) that he had already decided to fire Rumsfeld last week, even as he was insisting that Rummy would stay for two more years. So Bush’s own spin is that he was lying through his teeth last week. Good to have that confirmed in his own words. The removal of the increasingly deranged Rumsfeld is, of course, great news. This blog has been calling for such a move for close to two years. Frankly, I doubt it would have happened without what Bush called the "thumping" of last night. But it’s a start. If Bush were truly interested in reaching out, he would have picked a Democrat to replace him. I’m not sure what to make of Gates. But Rummy’s removal shows we do not have a complete nutcase in the White House. Given recent comments, that’s a relief.

(Photo: Brooks Kraft/Corbis for Time.)

Image of the Day

Valor

From the AP: "Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas embraced Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr during a Veterans Day commemoration in Dallas. Graunke lost a hand, a leg and an eye when he defused a bomb in Iraq last year."

We are still at war. And this election result should require all of us to lay aside partisanship and figure out how best to honor those serving us and how best to secure the least worst option in Iraq.

(Photo: AP)

Email of the Day

A "proud conservative" writes:

I’m a 29 year old, lifelong conservative Republican, and Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania.  I’m not sure I agree with you 100% on everything, but I appreciate your intellectual honesty – with yourself and with your readers. I used to be a huge Rush Tcscover_19 Limbaugh/Rick Santorum kind of Republican. I supported the war in Iraq. Voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. I was disappointed by your endorsement of John Kerry, but I realized what a difficult decision that was for you.

I didn’t completely understand it at the time, but now I do. You recognized the failings of the President and his cabal and the failings of Republicans in Congress long before the rest of us did. I began to move away from the far-right wing of the party when I realized how politicians used wedge issues like gay rights, abortion, guns, and flag burning to turn out the vote. Once they retained their power, they let the issues die, as they fully knew they would.  Combined with the corruption in Washington, and the President’s inability to admit he’s wrong, I began to question my own beliefs.

Your writings on the role of faith and fundamentalism in politics has been an eye-opener to me. Your articulation of a more authentic conservatism – the conservatism of Reagan and Goldwater and Thatcher – has made me question my own beliefs and question what it truly means to be a conservative. Consequently, as I near my 30th birthday, I find myself moving away from people like Rush and Rick, and towards what I hope is a more honest and humbler political philosophy. 

I believe in smaller government. I believe in efficient government. I believe in honest government. I believe in reason informed by faith. I believe in politics, informed by faith, but not ruled by it.  I believe in the principles of government as set forth by the Founding Fathers. I believe ours is not a Christian nation, and it never was.  It is a nation built on the ideals of the Enlightenment. Ideals born in Judeo-Christian thought, but tempered by secular reason and rationality.

The case for just such a renewed and vigorous conservatism – optimistic and inclusive and modern – is made in my book. Agree or disagree, I hope it helps further and deepen the debate now raging.