Donald Rumsfeld goodbye speech he said:

CAIRO Donald Rumsfeld's parting words were typically convoluted. He spoke of "this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century - it is not well known, it is not well understood, it is complex for people to comprehend."

I think the ones who didn't grasp the complexity was anyone telling the President we could "bring democracy" to Iraq.


Really good
editorial (http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2006/11/11/world/IHT-11globalist.html?ref=world)

To which the simplest retort is that the American people understood well enough to hand control of Congress to the Democrats and force President George W. Bush to respond to the political "thumping" by dispensing with Rumsfeld.

But Iraq is indeed complicated, not least because the administration has so often shifted its grounds for the war. So it's worth trying to walk back the cat, grasp how we got from there to here, at a moment when America's Iraq policy is up for grabs.

Freedom! It sounds wonderful. But, when dictatorships end in countries of fragile multi-ethnic and multi-religious composition, freedom is seldom understood as an invitation to liberal democracy. It's understood by each constituent group as an opportunity to be free of others, to go it alone at last.

A glance at what happened to Yugoslavia in the 1990s would have been sufficient to grasp that. Some consideration of the end of the Soviet Union would also have been instructive. As modern Iraq is a British creation, and an unhappy one, a moment's reflection on the ethnic and religious upheavals that followed another British withdrawal - from India in 1947 - might have been helpful, too.

But this was a gut-driven American war undertaken in a hermetic chamber of ideological certitude. Therein lies its astonishing boldness. Therein also lie its lamentable failings.

And here we are, more than three years on, in the midst of a conflict at once religious, tribal, sectarian, anti- colonial, existential and revolutionary. That's a handful.

Yes it is.

You left out one of the best paragraphs of the piece.

It was a British general, Rupert Smith, then wearing the blue helmet of the United Nations, who, on a particularly grim day in Sarajevo in 1995, commented to me that, "There's just no point hanging around in the midst of somebody else's war." That was three years into the Bosnian conflict, about the same stage Iraq is at.

A foreshadowing yes, but an inherent quality of the true abilities of the the UN.

The title of the thread is a nice mis-quote.

I have no sympathy for Rumsfeld. There were plenty of people who predicted the insurgency before we even begun the war -- including posters here in OT. The quote he should have made was "this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century - it is not well known, it is not well understood, it is complex for me to comprehend."

I have no sympathy for Rumsfeld. There were plenty of people who predicted the insurgency before we even begun the war -- including posters here in OT.Maybe they should hire you as Secretary of Defense. I'm sure you'd a great job, so long as you get a steady stream of that 20/20 hindsight ahead of time.

Maybe they should hire you as Secretary of Defense. I'm sure you'd a great job, so long as you get a steady stream of that 20/20 hindsight ahead of time.
I don't see a need for 20/20 hindsight. As I said in my post, there were plenty of people who predicted the insurgency before we even begun the war.

If I'd been in charge we'd have kept focused on Afghanistan and not invaded Iraq at all. Given that I've said that all along, there's no hindsight required there either. Hell, a potted plant could have done a better job as SoD than Rumsfeld. You have to actually work to fvck things up as badly as he did.

I don't see a need for 20/20 hindsight. As I said in my post, there were plenty of people who predicted the insurgency before we even begun the war.In any given situation, there are many people who predict many different possible futures. Only some of them are right. It's very easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to point to the people who guessed correctly and say "I told you so."If I'd been in charge we'd have kept focused on Afghanistan and not invaded Iraq at all.Okay. But if you had done that, and Saddam Hussein had gotten a hold of nukes, everyone would've pointed to <i>you</i> as the idiot who ignored the advice to invade Iraq.

Maybe they should hire you as Secretary of Defense. I'm sure you'd a great job, so long as you get a steady stream of that 20/20 hindsight ahead of time.

ost failed commanders don't get to choose the time, place, and nature of the conflict. Most failed commanders don't get the choice of whether to go to war at all. When you consider that, something has gone seriously wrong. Hindsight doesn't come into it.

In my opinion though, Rumsfeld is not any more to blame than the people who messed up the politics, diplomacy, and reconstruction. They're all connected.

But if you had done that, and Saddam Hussein had gotten a hold of nukes, everyone would've pointed to you as the idiot who ignored the advice to invade Iraq.

Oh yeah. When will you realise that Saddam had no uranium? He had no nuclear installations at all. He's at least five years behind where Iran are right now and at least a decade behind the North Koreans. We don't even expect the Koreans to have weapon for a few years yet. It would probably have taken Saddam even longer to catch up as there were sanctions, weapons inspectors, and even US spy planes watching what he was doing. How can you possibly still be threatening us with Saddam's non-existant nuclear weapons?

When you consider that, something has gone seriously wrong.Yes, we should have pulled out once the job was done. Fortunately, we still have this option.Oh yeah. When will you realise that Saddam had no uranium? He had no nuclear installations at all. He's at least five years behind where Iran are right now and at least a decade behind the North Koreans. We don't even expect the Koreans to have weapon for a few years yet. It would probably have taken Saddam even longer to catch up as there were sanctions, weapons inspectors, and even US spy planes watching what he was doing. How can you possibly still be threatening us with Saddam's non-existant nuclear weapons?Non-existent <i>then</i> (and we didn't really know <i>that</i> for certain until the invasion). You don't know what would have happened had he remained in power. And you don't want to wait until it's too late, especially when dealing with a nation with a suicide bomber mentality.

In any given situation, there are many people who predict many different possible futures. Only some of them are right.
Rumsfeld was warned by a number of Generals about the risks of a protracted insurgency. I certainly wouldn't expect him to respect my opinion but he bloody well should respect theirs.

Rumsfeld was warned by a number of Generals about the risks of a protracted insurgency. I certainly wouldn't expect him to respect my opinion but he bloody well should respect theirs.So? If three generals had said it was a bad idea, but ten others had said it was a good idea, he would have been making the best decision by going forward.

Of course, that's a made-up situation, but you can't just invalidate a decision by selectively pointing to facts, with the benefit of hindsight, that weighed against it. Well, you can (and the media does, all the time), but you won't convince intelligent people.

So? If three generals had said it was a bad idea, but ten others had said it was a good idea, he would have been making the best decision by going forward.
Rumsfeld was warned by some seriously heavy hitters (including Shinseki, Franks, Garner, and SotA White) yet he chose to ignore them completely.

The Neocon Fantasy is over. Now Daddy is trying to help out. I hope he doesn't sell Iraq to the Saudis! :D

Howard Kurtz's show was really good yesterday, they spent a good amount of time talking about this. It was pretty clear that Rumsfeld didn't want anything to interrupt his picture of how things were going and should go, anyone that did... found themselves without a job.

The Neocon Fantasy is over. Now Daddy is trying to help out.
I loved Maureen Dowd's comment from Sunday's Meet the press where she likened the neocons to the Moonies:

"Well, I think the best way for me to describe it is that, remember when parents would have their teenagers kidnapped by a Moony cult, and they would try and, and get him back, and deprogram him? That’s what’s—the, the 41 [George H. W. Bush] group is doing. They’re trying to get W back away from the cult of the neocons, as they see it, and reprogram him in the family tradition of internationalism, diplomacy, nuance. And Baker’s the deprogrammer."

[Full Transcript... (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15637887/page/5/)]

LOL!

Hey... I didn't realize transcripts of Howie's show are online. How cool!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0611/12/rs.01.html

KURTZ: After they Afghanistan war, the press kind of treated Rumsfeld like a rock star for a while.

Do you agree with Pam's analysis about a great man brought low?

RICKS: He's a man of great talent, great energy, great vigor. I think where he went wrong in Iraq was the summer of 2003, when all those characteristics could have really helped us adjust and recognize the insurgency.

And instead, he kind of froze and said there is no war, there is no insurgence. In a hierarchical system like the military, when the top guy freezes the whole system freezes. That's when we lost the initiative in Iraq, that's when things started going wrong. And he was never able to catch up with that and say, wait a second, I got it wrong, fellas.

HESS: If I can say this, the reason that I think he was a rock star was really 9/11, because Bush was flying around hiding, Cheney was in hiding, and Rumsfeld was the only evidence at the Pentagon that the federal government was still functioning. And I think people really rallied around him for that.

KURTZ: Now, turning to the president's nominee to succeed Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, there's an emerging storyline because of Gates and because of Jim Baker, who heads this bipartisan study commission in Iraq, and others who worked for Bush 41's administration that they are kind of riding to the rescue -- in fact, "Newsweek's" cover -- if we could put it up there -- talks about "Father Knows Best." There's the headline.

Is that storyline just an easy, cheap Oedipal way for the press to characterize what's going on, or is there something to it?

RICKS: Well, just because it's easy and cheap doesn't mean it's wrong. I think that the story of this week was "make room for daddy and daddy's friends." And the resurgence of kind of a pragmatic process-oriented approach to Iraq. Hey, we tried the neoconservative fantasy. It didn't work. Let's try plan B.

Plan B is, OK, let's get serious about addressing Iraq as a tragedy. I think where the Iraq Study Group is coming from is saying there are no good answers left, what's the least bad option?

KURTZ: The neoconservative fantasy being that Iraq would be easy to do and there would be no great difficulties after the initial invasion.

RICKS: And that once you transformed Iraq it into a democracy it would become a beacon of change that would result in the whole Middle East changing. They called it draining the swamp.

KURTZ: Robert Gates has some controversy in the past, including some role in the Iran Contra scandal. Will he get a lot of media scrutiny coming into this job, or does he kind of get to come in with a clean slate?

HESS: No, he's going to get a lot of scrutiny, I think, going into the nomination. What's going to be difficult for us at the Pentagon is feeling him out at these press briefings. I think what you're going to see is everyone being a lot more polite than we've been with Rumsfeld and trying to feel him out first.

KURTZ: Well, if that's true, then they won't get on television as often. Polite briefings? Boy.

HESS: Yes.

KURTZ: Pam Hess, Tom Ricks, thanks very much for an enlightening discussion.

And this:
HESS: Yes. And actually, I was thinking about this this morning. I was downtown last year, and I had just returned from a long trip, nine weeks in Iraq, and his motorcade drove by and stopped and picked me up and took me to the Pentagon. And on the way in...

KURTZ: How regularly did that happen?

HESS: That was just a one-time thing. But on the way in we chatted a little bit about Iraq. And as I was able to launch into, "Here's what I saw for nine weeks," he was really -- I was shocked by how uninterested he was in what I had to say.

He already had his mind made up. Don Rumsfeld has a real sense of history, and I think that it's a great thing as it makes him very steadfast, but it also blinds him to the day-to-day things that he probably needed to shift.

KURTZ: Was it fair for the press to kind of turn Rumsfeld into a symbol of this unpopular war? Or did he really turn himself into a symbol?

RICKS: I think he turned himself into a symbol. There's a terrific piece in this week's "New Yorker" by Jeffrey Goldberg about a confrontation between Rumsfeld's old friend Kenneth Adelman and Rumsfeld, in which Adelman is saying, "You're losing in Iraq." And Rumsfeld didn't want to hear -- interrupted and said, "Excuse me," interrupting.

I mean, here's the great interrupter. And Adelman says he was fired as head of the Defense Policy Board a few weeks ago simply because Rumsfeld didn't want to hear it.

KURTZ: And what about the question I raised with Pam about the -- that journalists, as the war went on, as the war seemingly got worse, as U.S. casualties grow, and as journalists went by themselves to see it -- you've written a book on this -- had a very different picture of how that conflict was going, compared to the picture presented from the podium by Donald Rumsfeld?

RICKS: Yes. The interesting thing is the U.S. government consistently has been between six months and a year behind the reality on the ground in Iraq. The media I think were much better at it. When people ask me, "Did the media tell the truth about Iraq?," I say, "No, it was much worse than the media said."

KURTZ: Much worse?

RICKS: Yes.

KURTZ: Why is that?

RICKS: Well, as I've had officers in the Pentagon say to me, "Tom, you know your book 'Fiasco'? A little bit too optimistic."

Maybe they should hire you as Secretary of Defense. I'm sure you'd a great job, so long as you get a steady stream of that 20/20 hindsight ahead of time.

The virtual certainty of fierce insurgency and sectarian conflict was well known long before 2003. It was one of the primary reasons why we did not invade Iraq and overthrow Sadam in '91. President GHW Bush even wrote a book on it...