Donald Rumsfeld: "His Lies, Crimes and Deaths"

[PeterRS]

As a perceptive article in yesterday's Guardian points out, it is customary to look at the good that men do when they pass from this earth. Talking of the death of Rumsfeld, President Bush praised his "steady service as a wartime Secretary of Defence - a duty he carried out with strength, skill and honour." Even the USA's main serious newspapers had reasonably decent comments on his life.

In the case of Rumsfled, though, surely Mark Anthony's words in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar are far more likely to be accurate: "the evil that men do lives after them." 

As the Guardian article points out:

"He destroyed the public trust, the integrity of the presidency, and left America’s reputation far weaker than when he came.

"How did he do all that in the fevered five years between the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and his resignation in 2006?

"We could start with his disastrous decision to turn away from the hunt from Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to pursue Saddam Hussein in Iraq: one of the most baffling, harebrained and ultimately bloody choices in the history of American national security.

"We now know that Rumsfeld was contemplating this bizarre plan within days, if not hours, of the attacks. He pursued an illegal aggressive war with no link to al-Qaida but with all the dogged skills he had learned from a career inside Washington, concocting a case for war that destroyed international trust and the integrity of anyone who touched it . . . 

"We are still living with the catastrophic consequences of Rumsfeld and his gang [Cheney etc.]. There’s a direct line from the Iraq invasion to Syria’s civil war, along with the immense suffering of millions of civilians, and the political strain and instability caused by so many refugees to this day.

"It’s not as if this chain of events was unimaginable at the time.

"Rumsfeld himself was just about smart enough to flick at the lid of the Pandora’s box he was about to detonate. In one of his classically cryptic memos to his inner circle of warmongers in late 2001, Rumsfeld casually raised an eyebrow over the chaos he was unleashing on the world.

“'We ought to think through what are the bad things that could happen, and what are the good things that can happen that we need to be ready for in both respects. Please give me a list of each,' he wrote. 'Thanks.'

"Rumsfeld might have been talking about Afghanistan, where Kabul was about to fall and Bin Laden was ready to run for the mountains at Tora Bora. Or he might have been talking about Iraq, where Rumsfeld was already planning his war. Either way, he botched them both by failing to give a damn about the messy business of rebuilding nations after war . . .

"It was this mixture of extreme arrogance and incompetence, along with a cavalier disregard for human suffering and integrity, that was the hallmark of Rumsfeld’s short and bloody reign. His policy chief, Doug Feith, bragged about how going to Baghdad was just a milestone on the road to Tehran.

"But when Iraq fell apart, their hawkish allies in the White House turned on Rumsfeld’s team for failing to have any kind of credible plan to run a country ravaged by decades of sanctions, airstrikes and corrupt government . . .

"Rumsfeld’s victories were illusions. His defeats will outlive him. And his much-vaunted courage was a smokescreen for lies, crimes and deaths. If he was an exemplary public servant, we need to reimagine what public service actually means."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/01/donald-rumsfeld-defense-secretary-lies-crime-death

[Guest]

Rumsfeld Legacy

Trillions spent in Afghanistan & Iraq.  Hundreds of thousands dead & millions displaced  - 20 years later…..for what ?   Basically to a make money for defense contractors, lobbyists & politicians.  Meanwhile, American infrastructure crumbles and we are descending into third world status. We might already be there.

America never learns the lessons of war - too much money to be made by the warmongers.  Whenever one of them dies - the world is a better place.

[PeterRS]

16 hours ago, Slvkguy said:

Rumsfeld Legacy

Trillions spent in Afghanistan & Iraq.  Hundreds of thousands dead & millions displaced  - 20 years later…..for what ?   Basically to a make money for defense contractors, lobbyists & politicians.  Meanwhile, American infrastructure crumbles and we are descending into third world status. We might already be there.

America never learns the lessons of war - too much money to be made by the warmongers.  Whenever one of them dies - the world is a better place.

Eisenhower was correct.

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

[reader]

Ike's well remembered for that quote. What he's not so well remembered for is Executive Order 10450.

In response to growing concern over the loyalty and security of the Federal workforce,on April 27, 1953,President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 -Security requirements for Government Employment. Sec. 8 (a)(1)(iii)of this order authorized investigations to "develop information as to whether the employment or retention in employment in the Federal service of the person being investigated is clearly consistent with the interests of the national security." Among the list of suspect behaviors considered criminal, immoral or unethical was ―sexual perversion.

Source: Eisenhower Library collections

An article five years ago in the Huffington Post sheds more light on the issue:

Perved: Eisenhower Anti-Gay Executive Order Turns 60

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/perved-eisenhower-anti-gay-executive-order-turns-60_b_3181062

 

 

[vinapu]

9 minutes ago, reader said:

 

Perved: Eisenhower Anti-Gay Executive Order Turns 60

 

world those days was worried about real or perceived threats since domesticated like gays or vanished like communism but nobody was worried about belching smoke stacks and Spanish flu pandemic was already forgotten.

So in short we should ponder and remember but we can't entirely judge our grandparents using our criteria. Even most bigoted racist would not ask Rosa Parks to move to back seat on the bus nowadays, obvious and widely accepted practice then. 

Ike was wrong but he was son of his times

[PeterRS]

On 7/3/2021 at 8:24 PM, vinapu said:

world those days was worried about real or perceived threats since domesticated like gays or vanished like communism but nobody was worried about belching smoke stacks and Spanish flu pandemic was already forgotten.

So in short we should ponder and remember but we can't entirely judge our grandparents using our criteria. Even most bigoted racist would not ask Rosa Parks to move to back seat on the bus nowadays, obvious and widely accepted practice then. 

Ike was wrong but he was son of his times

With all respect, the horrors of racism were indeed born out of the centuries old 'tradition' of slavery. Not to diminish it in any way whatever, though, I do suggest that making war on a country is a totally different issue. This is especially true when you know so little about the country you have decided to make war on. We know that the excuse for going to war in Vietnam - the Tonkin incident - was a manufactured lie. McNamara's book In Retrospect sums up what followed as a result of that lie. "We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation . . . Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong." I wonder how the families of the more than 3 million killed in those USA adventures felt when they read that, an admission from the man who basically directed much of that war, the Secretary for Defence. And what of those massacred in Laos and Cambodia, wars that were illegal in that Congress had not given the President approval to make war in those countries?

Go further back in time. The USA was one of the most anti-colonial governments anywhere. Yet it permitted the hated French to return to take over its Indo Chinese colonies without any suggestion that it might eventually withdraw. Had first Roosevelt and later Truman paid any heed whatever to the various letters received from Ho Chi Minh, they would have realised that Ho was a nationalist and he wanted his country back from the French. Had Truman put pressure on France, that country was in no position to resist. It could have said its farewells to India-China and likely there would have been no wars in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. Russia and China only became involved thereby making the region a Cold War issue after 1950. Would they have become involved if Vietnam had become an independent nation in 1947 with assistance to build the country from the USA, that country of which Vietnam had been an active ally in World War 2? 

The problem with war is that too many governments resort to it on the basis of assumptions and vastly insufficient knowledge. The USA had hardly any South East Asian specialists in Washington after World War 2. It had hardly any Arabic speakers prior to the invasion of Iraq. The British had too little knowledge when it decided to invade Egypt in the 1950s to take back the Sex Canal. It suffered an ignominious defeat. So lies formed the basis of actions.

[reader]

 

3 hours ago, PeterRS said:

The problem with war is that too many governments resort to it on the basis of assumptions and vastly insufficient knowledge. The USA had hardly any South East Asian specialists in Washington after World War 2. It had hardly any Arabic speakers prior to the invasion of Iraq. The British had too little knowledge when it decided to invade Egypt in the 1950s to take back the Sex Canal. It suffered an ignominious defeat. So lies formed the basis of actions.

I find myself agreeing with much of what you say.

I'd go as far as to say that the US supported the wrong side in Vietnam. The regime in the south was corruption on steroids.

[vinapu]

5 hours ago, PeterRS said:

......... invade Egypt in the 1950s to take back the Sex Canal. ...

how far is that from Suez canal ?

[PeterRS]

13 hours ago, vinapu said:

how far is that from Suez canal ?

Probably illustrates that I had my mind on other things when that slipped through 

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, PeterRS said:

Probably illustrates that I had my mind on other things when that slipped through 

Or autocorrector just corrected you incorrectly, LOL