Does He Still Have a Job?

Don Rumsfeld went on the teevee today and basically called America gutless:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of lacking the courage to fight terror.

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral and intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security.

Addressing several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.

"I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism" he said.

Here with go again with the canard that any criticism of policy equals "you want the terrorists to win." Americans have made up their minds about this war in the face of cold, hard logic. They see fighting in the streets of Iraq and know that we've brought civil war and a terrorist haven to the Middle East. They see one by one people who've seen the facts on the ground in Iraq come around to the idea that it was not connected to the war on terror, that it was instead the greatest foreign policy blunder foisted upon this nation in a century. They're seeing Republican after Republican running for cover and calling for withdrawal. They're seeing 65% of the public agree that the war was a mistake. It's not a question of moral confusion. It's not a question of willpower:

As you may know, the Green Lantern Corps is a sort of interstellar peacekeeping force set up by the Guardians of Oa to maintain the peace and defend justice. It recruits members from all sorts of different species and equips them with the most powerful weapon in the universe, the power ring.

The ring is a bit goofy. Basically, it lets its bearer generate streams of green energy that can take on all kinds of shapes. The important point is that, when fully charged what the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user's combination of will and imagination. Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of "overcoming fear" which allows you to unleash the ring's full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn't function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the "Parallax fear anomaly" which, along with all the ring's other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.

Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.

It's faith-based defense strategy, and arguing against someone who believes that military force can literally do anything is no different than arguing about faith with a believer. Rummy and his boys have locked themselves into airtight chambers devoid of logic. And it's the perfect place to spring more and more attacks, lining the pockets of more and more defense contractors, for less and less gain to our security and stability.

Rumsfeld also has decided that the media is to blame:

FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, Nev. -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media" to influence Westerners.

"That's the thing that keeps me up at night," he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other Navy personnel at this flight training base for Navy and Marine pilots.

"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.

"They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"They can lie with impunity," he said, while U.S. troops are held to a high standard of conduct.

Yes, those wedding parties were holograms! The murdered detainees (which have resulted in convictions for US personnel) were unicorns! The 50,000 dead Iraqi civilians mirages! Look, if this is the most powerful country on Earth, you disgrace yourself by whining that the other side is lying and we're somehow powerless to tell the truth. Your blatant disregard for the deaths of civilians shows your own contempt for the truth. This is a charge for the books.

No Democrat should shrink from these attacks. They're DESIGNED to throw Democrats off balance and come from no coherent logic. They're simply to make Dems go wobbly. As Digby writes:

This is terribly important for everyone to understand. This is not a real critique. It's a psych-out designed purely to make the Democrats go wobbly and to get the media to portray them that way. It's about optics, heuristics and image. If the Democratic Party falls for it, it will be a crime. There is no substance to what they are saying and there is no reason for Dems to even flinch from such empty intimidation. Indeed, they should snarl right back in their faces.

Harry Reid is not falling for it.

Secretary Rumsfeld’s reckless comments show why America is not as safe as it can or should be five years after 9/11. The Bush White House is more interested in lashing out at its political enemies and distracting from its failures than it is in winning the War on Terror and in bringing an end to the war in Iraq. If there's one person who has failed to learn the lessons of history it's Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld ignored military experts when he rushed to war without enough troops, without sufficient body armor, and without a plan to succeed. Under this Administration's watch, terror attacks have increased, Iraq has fallen into civil war, and our military has been stretched thin. We have a choice to make today. Do we trust Secretary Rumsfeld to make the right decisions to keep us safe after he has been so consistently wrong since the start of the Iraq War? Or, do we change course in Iraq and put in place new leadership that will put the safety of the American people ahead of partisan games? For the sake of the safety of this country, it is time to make a change.

Now I'd like to see somebody say, "Hasn't Rumsfeld resigned yet? Is he still even in charge anymore? Who cares what he thinks?"