Rumsfeld's War & Neoconservative Fascism

Wars must vary with the nature of their motives and of the situtation which gives rise to them. The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and the commander have to make is to establish by that kind of test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something alient to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.

-- "On War" by Carl von Clausewitz

My knee can jerk with the best of 'em, but I try to take the long view when it comes to a complex critter like the war in Iraq. That is why I can say that the war we saw in April 2003 as that statue of Saddam Hussein was being toppled in Baghdad's Firdos Square by a Marine Corps armored vehicle and the war that we see nearly three and a half years later as American troops rush from conflagration to conflagration in a country descending into anarchy is very much the same war.

Although the defense secretary made a gesture of giving credit to others after the U.S.'s semi-lightning fast victory against Saddam's enfeebled Republican Guard (and considerable more together Fedayeen) and has been relentless in shifting blame to others during the myriad setbacks since then, Iraq is singularly and distinctively Donald Rumsfeld's war.

He anticipated it years before George Bush was elected, he planned it while the fires from the 9/11 terror attacks still burned, he executed it through Tommy Franks and other compliant generals, and he has relentlessly pursued it even as his assumptions have been revealed as fraudulent and his goals have fallen by the bloody wayside.

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There are things to like about Rumsfeld. He brings to the job the combative and focused style of a wrestler (which he was at Princeton University). I like that. He has given most of his life to public service at a time when the best and the brightest gravitate to corporate or academic life. I like that, too. He is both the youngest and oldest serving defense secretary, having held that position under both Gerald Ford and Bush. And if he hangs on until November 2007, he will have become the longest serving Pentagon chief in history.

Rumsfeld also has that vision thing, and lost in the Iraq disaster has been his determination to implement what is known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine -- weaning the American military from its Cold War mindset and remaking it into a leaner and more innovative fighting machine less reliant on large ground forces and long supply lines.

That, in the abstract, was a praiseworthy goal, but it was undercut by a resistant Pentagon bureaucracy, his own arrogance and, in the end, the need to fight his war the old fashioned way.

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Rumsfeld's nomination as defense secretary surprised me at the time, but as I look back I can see how well it fit into the neoconservative brain trust's master plan.

Rumsfeld was close to Vice President-elect Cheney. Both were drunk on the neocon Kool Aid, believers in the notion that it was America's obligation as the sole remaining global superpower to impose its will anywhere at point of gun where it thought its interests were not being served. No pussy footing as the Clinton administration had in Somalia or Kosovo. And in George Bush they had a president who would give them free rein and they in turn could manipulate.

It is no accident that Cheney is the most powerful vice president in history and Rumsfeld the most powerful defense secretary.

We now know that Rumsfeld shares something else with Cheney: A disregard to human life and suffering. ("Stuff happens." "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.") And a pathological inability to acknowledge opposing points of view, let alone brook dissent. ("Out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round.")

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I do not mean to compare the Bush administration to the Third Reich. At least not in an overall sense. That would be inapt.

But since Rumsfeld is fond of invoking the specter of Hitler and those who appeased the Nazis when he ventures out of his bunker and onto the stump to defend his war before safe veterans groups in safe places like Utah, it should be noted that Hitler, Borman and Goebbels also had a master plan and like Bush's neocon brain trust questioned the intellect and morality of anyone who questioned them.

Here's where I run out of road and turn things over to MSNBC commentator and blogger Keith Obermann. He often is too over the top for moi, but effectively parries Rumsfeld's view that anyone who criticizes his war policy is a traitor with this thrust:

For in [Hitler's] time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us . . . We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.