Rummy Still Doesn't Get It: Anti-Rumsfeld & His Iraqi Adventure Does Not Mean Anti-War On Terror

I love to study international relations when I can rip myself away from the 1000's of legal blog posts and the 15 or so legal magazines I read each week. On this blog, which I treat as my voice in the Blogshere, I still try to keep to the issues of law that face us everyday, with a major focus on Civil Rights and Criminal Justice.

I have assiduously stayed away from speaking about the War on Terror abroad or the War in Iraq. As most of you know, just as the doves destroyed the word liberal(forcing it to mean appeaser and spineless) in the 1960's and early 1970's, the neoconservative (almost al of them) hawks are about to drive the word "Conservative" over an embankment and to a fiery death.

In the 1960's, one could not be "liberal" and support our troops or our work in Viet Nam. The "Doves" took over the Democrat party and drove out most of those who were patriotic and supportive of our military. They called you a "traitor to the cause". They would routinely commit hari-kari and run unelectable doves against more moderate but liberal Democrat candidates in primaries. They would kill any chance that the primary winner would have a shot in the general election by pushing the moderate so far left that he was unelectable in a general election. They would rather lose the base of the movement as a whole then have anything less than a purity of mission.

Let's get something straight from the beginning. A Neo-con IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE. In fact we should not use the word conservative in speaking about them. These guys are the old moderate liberals who got mugged by the Doves. They spend like money is water and feather their own nests just like the democrat/liberals of old. Just like those guys they cannot tolerate when someone disagrees with them. They will not tolerate anything less than purity in their message.

So now comes Donald "I wish I had thought of an exit strategy" Rumsfeld bitching and moaning that real conservatives are abandoning the reservation on Iraq. If we are against the Iraqi War, we're coddling terrorists. Next thing you know he will accuse us of out right treason. According to this Washington Post article Rummy accuses us of "moral and intellectual confusion." That translates into those that oppose us are immoral and stupid.

I have a word for Rummy: You need to go, now.

Tell the President that you resign, and will not accept his refusal to accept your resignation. You sir are confused. Yes, we cannot abandon Iraq now. Admit however that you were wrong to go in there until you defined a clear mission and one that was based on the right reason to be there. There were no WMD's there. Saddam was a bastard. He was killing people and torturing them. These conditions could lead to a breeding ground for terror. IF we understood the reasons we were going there, maybe we would have defined the conditions better. Maybe we would have stopped you. Maybe you would have had some semblance of credibility. Maybe you would not have to hide behind false patriotism.

For a second, Rummy, admit you screwed the pooch. You mistakenly thought that the immorality of the Saddam regime would bring the people to us the way they loved Patton in Sicily. You expected them to bring you Saddam dead, naked, and hung upside down in the town square ala Mussolini. You attacked the wrong regime for the wrong reason. You continue to tell us that you are fighting terror there when your war imported terrorists into the country. IF you wanted to find terrorists you could have by strategically attacking Iran and Syria. Hell there were less terrorists in prewar Iraq than there is oil in Israel.

Your war in Iraq is costing us a ton of money, prestige, and effort, not to mention life.

Come on Donald, admit the mistakes now, You and your boy need some credibility with those of us that understand there were mistakes made at the highest levels. Come clean and the real conservatives will stick it out in Iraq to stabilize things. What will cease to happen is the "democracy" building BS you've been hurling at us. We will fund and fight wars that make us safer and let the rest alone for a day when the concepts of Democracy win the hearts and minds of the people and they are not forced to accept the concept of freedom at the point of a gun.

NO Donald, we are not immoral or confused. We get that Freedom and Democracy is something you have to want and earn. We understand that we can't leave, we just want you to know, that this mission needs to end when stability is reached. Fighting for freedom and democracy is someone else's fight, a Iraqi Hamilton or Jefferson perhaps, not some old neo-con from Washington DC.