Rumsfeld Ignores History, Continues Spin

Eight years have passed since Donald Rumsfeld first began advocating a war against Iraq; our optional war in Iraq has become the biggest strategic blunder in American history. And yet, it appears the rehabilitation of Donald Rumsfeld is well under way. I expect he'll receive his Medal of Freedom the next time Bush wishes to distract attention from his failures. MSNBC has an AP story on the outgoing Secretary of Defense:

With an eye on his legacy, Rumsfeld asked to be judged by the extraordinary nature of today's threat, like none that has come before.

"There's no road map, no guidebook," he said. "The hope has to be - not perfection - but that most decisions, with the perspective of time, will turn out to be the right ones and that the perspective of history will judge the overwhelming majority of those decisions favorably."

This is a ridiculous self-serving statement that ignores 90 years of American diplomacy as well as the specific lessons of Vietnam. It ignores the enormity of World War Two and it ignores the the difficult but informative debates about bipartisan foreign policy that existed during the Cold War. It also ignores many identifiable blunders that Rumsfeld made. On many occassions during Bush's first term, Donald Rumsfeld sat across from Colin Powell who had useful advice for the defense secretary: send enough troops, define your mission, and have an exit strategy. The arrogant incompetence of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld may indeed lead to the war of civilizations that neoconservatives and their right wing enablers blather about. We can only hope Democrats can find ways to limit the damage and that American voters remember cause and effect in the next election.