In discussing Constitutional Law we constantly argue from the past, using history and cases.
History is the story of what happened, told in a way from which we can draw lessons. If you think Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were murderous tyrants, you tell their story so that the listener knows why you think so and why you think that they should think so too.
Naturally there are as many versions, and views, of history as there are those who tell the story and those who listen. Each is free to tell, and hear, the story for himself, as no one has a monopoly on the past.
This is a subject that has received considerable attention, evidenced by the statement that he who controls the past controls the future.
If a nation such as Japan presents itself as benign and covers up, from its schoolchildren, the Japanese responsibility for causing, initiating World War II and the terrible atrocities it committed in China, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, and everywhere else that Japan occupied, those schoolchildren become citizens and voters who see Japan far differently from the way others, such as Americans who remember such things, do. This accounts for the controversy over Prime Minister Koizumi's annual visits to the Yasukune memorial since the remains of convicted war criminals were placed there. Japan and Korea are particularly aggrieved that Japan has not, in their view, fully acknowledged it's horrid past. Japan leaves out, papers over, whitewashes, its history.
We don't much like to talk about our own slave and Jim Crow past either. We do, however, continue to try to deal with their effects. The history is available to study and comment upon. We make some effort to learn from our own horrid past. We continually rake over the coals. Some of us.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, the leader of our war effort in Iraq, is an American archetype: a former fighter pilot, former Secretary of Defense under Pres. Gerald "I pardoned Nixon after he made me his Vice President and resigned in disgrace" Ford, and exemplar of a militant mindset.
Of course he has been an active player during the Cold War when we saw the world in dualistic terms of the West against the godless Communists, us against them, a world of black-and-white. Any gain for them was a loss for us. Any loss for us was a gain for them. But God was on our side, so we won. God is always on our side, even when we hold slaves.
The war in Iraq is not going well. Critics have laid out the evidence that Rumsfeld stifled plans for the postwar, called Phase IV. Instead of stabilizing Iraq, we've allowed dissident groups to become active and commit suicide bombings of civilians and security forces alike.
Responding to the critics, the Administration maintains that we only see the bad news, not the good. Most of Iraq has settled into peaceful existence, while only in Baghdad and Anwar Province to its west is there this ugly business. Our problem is the press. It only reports news, and peace isn't news. The press reports on the daily civilian casualty toll. And the five U.S. soldiers we lost yesterday. And every day, give or take a few American soldiers. We continue to bleed as Iraq continues to bleed. No end in sight.
Rumsfeld says that pointing to such evidence is a way of criticizing the administration, his administration, unfairly. His critics are appeasing the enemy. His critics are unpatriotic. His critics have not learned the lessons of history.
Others think that warning your country against going down the wrong road is ones highest patriotic duty. And that warning your country against going further down the wrong road is even more patriotic.
Some think that one should draw lessons from what is happening on the ground in Iraq now, and from what is happening in Washington, where Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice preside over a war, or insurgency, that has us, and Iraq, bogged down.
Rumsfeld, however, emphasizes, in his public remarks, what happened in previous stages of conflict, such as the run-up to World War II, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich to meet with Hitler and came back declaring as he got off the plane, "Peace in our time." A few days later Hitler blitzkrieged Czechoslovakia, as in invaded, in a "lightning war," which is what a blitz-krieg translates to.
Chamberlain was immediately defeated by Winston Churchill who went on to lead Britain through the hard times of World War II. Churchill was tough. When Britain was all but defeated by Hitler's bombing and rocket-attacking of London, Coventry, and other places with bombers and V-1 and V-2 rockets, Churchill promised to continue to fight on the beaches, on the fields, until the last man was left standing, for this was our finest hour, he proclaimed. Churchill was the picture for steadfast resolve in the face of calamity.
Churchill, and Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough-rider, are the models for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Rice must be emulating Margaret Thacher, former British P.M. She modeled herself after Boadicca, the warrior queen of the ancient Britons.
Acting tough, talking tough, standing tall, showing resolve and steadfastness, are the hallmarks of successful leaders throughout the ages. But continuing onward stubbornly and refusing to see the facts in front of your face because they don't fit with you illusions is considered delusional. Many a leader has led his country down the sewer because he couldn't imagine a world different than the one playing out in his head.
I hope that's not us.
But when Rumsfeld counters his critics by saying, "You haven't read your history," he reminds me of a former friend who I finally decided was insane. His answer to most questions was that "You haven't read your history," or "You've mis-read your history." This from a guy who never read a book and hadn't changed his views since he was in high school, from which he failed to graduate. And he couldn't cite the history on which he relied. There's lots of history. A lot of what we call history consists of different versions from different points of view. There is no official U.S. version of history. Given our freedom of mind, to think and write what we think about different things, we have all sorts of different versions of history.
What Rumsfeld must mean is that his critics are operating off a different version of history and his is the true and correct version, all others being lies.
It's hard to argue with a man like that. You talk past each other. The only way to really deal with a guy like Rumsfeld is to make sure that the guy who appointed him to the position where he contributes to so much destruction doesn't get re-elected. George W, however, is term limited out, see Amendment 22, presidential term limits, enacted to prevent another FDR who was in his fourth term when he died. We've got two-and-a-half more years of the current administration. We've lost 2,500 American service lives in Iraq since "Mission Accomplished." No end in sight.
We have no time-table for leaving. I don't want a date certain to leave. We don't know on which date Iraq will be able to fend for itself. We say we're going to stand down when Iraq stands up. Iraq hasn't been able to get to its knees, much less to its feet.
We're in a mess. I don't need to hear about Chamberlain in Munich and his appeasement of Hitler that failed.
I haven't heard anyone say that we should treat with terrorists the way Chamberlain treated with Hitler. So I think it more than unfair for Rumsfeld to try to label his critics as unpatriotic appeasers. How patriotic is it to continue to throw young, vibrant lives, after those we've already sacrificed? The patriotic thing to do is either to press the administration to present a realistic event-table that will enable us to replace American forces with Iraqi forces. Then we've done the job we came to do anyway and all sides can welcome our departure, on the home front as well as in Iraq.
We don't seem to be doing a good job of bringing Iraq into position to govern effectively, to secure the peace, to administer the economy, to deal with its neighbors such as Iran.
We knew, or should have known, that this would be the problem as soon as our forces toppled Saddam, which was never in question. The question was what would happen next. Most of the criticism I've seen has been directed to our failure to properly address this question and it was most definitely considered.
The problem was that our top general for the invasion, had his plate full planning to win the war he started by invading and no time for counting his winnings after he won. We're making that up as we go along, and that is the problem.
We go to war too quickly, without any idea what happens next. We start back-fires and act surprised to discover that behind us the forest is on fire. We didn't plan for that.
The world is too complicated a place for the U.S. to go around starting forest fires by accident.
Rumsfeld's comments are reported by the New York Times below:
Rumsfeld Says War Critics Haven’t Learned Lessons of History
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 29 — Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that
critics of the war in Iraq and the campaign against terror groups “seem not to have learned history’s lessons,” and he alluded to those in the 1930’s who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany.
In a speech to thousands of veterans at the American Legion’s annual convention here, Mr. Rumsfeld sharpened his rebuttal of critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy, some of whom have called for phased withdrawal of United States forces or partitioning of the country.
Comparing terrorist groups to a “new type of fascism,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”
It was the second unusually combative speech by Mr. Rumsfeld to a veterans group in two days and appeared to be part of a concerted administration effort to address criticism of the war’s conduct.
On Monday, Mr. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney gave separate speeches to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nev. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to the American Legion Auxiliary on Tuesday and President Bush is to address veterans later this week.
Mr. Cheney, too, spoke of appeasement at an appearance on Tuesday at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, reciting a passage that echoed verbatim one of his stock speeches.
“This is not an enemy that can be ignored, or negotiated with, or appeased,’’ he said. “And every retreat by civilized nations is an invitation to further violence against us. Men who despise freedom will attack freedom in any part of the world, and so responsible nations have a duty to stay on the offensive, together, to remove this threat.”
Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech on Tuesday did not explicitly mention the Democrats, and he cited only comments by human rights groups and in press reports as evidence of what he described as “moral or intellectual confusion about who or what is right or wrong.”
In many previous speeches, including some before groups of veterans for whom World War II is a sacred memory, he has compared the government of Saddam Hussein, and the violent resistance since it fell, to the Nazis, and warned explicitly against appeasement there or in the broader campaign against terrorism, comparing it to the error of appeasing Hitler.
While he did not directly compare current critics of the war in Iraq to those who sought to appease Hitler, his juxtaposition of the themes led Democrats to say that he was leveling an unfair charge.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a former Army officer and a Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, responded that “no one has misread history more” than Mr. Rumsfeld.
“It’s a political rant to cover up his incompetence,” Senator Reed, a longtime critic of Mr. Rumsfeld’s handling of the war, told The Associated Press.
Mr. Reed said there were “scores of patriotic Americans of both parties who are highly critical of his handling of the Department of Defense.”
Mr. Rumsfeld, speaking just weeks before the fifth anniversary of 9/11, also took on criticisms of the administration’s approach for combating terrorism outside Iraq, like the use of wiretaps without warrants.
“This enemy is serious, lethal and relentless,’’ he said. “But this is not well recognized or fully understood.”
There are two recent books of interest in this arena, "Fiasco: The American military adventure in Iraq," by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin Press) and "The battle for Peace: A frontline vision of America's power and purpose," by Gen. Tony Zinni (Palgrave Macmillan).
Some of Zinni's recent remarks equate to fifteen years of contingency plans for Iraq being thrown out and being re-written by Rumsfield in eight months. Lack of understanding at the top appears to be the biggest problem we have had. In the end it will lead to loss of lives and treasure with a quagmire at the finish line. It will provide a reverse of the domino effect we desired and become a text book for those whose desire is to destabilize the West.
Posted by: John Ritter | August 30, 2006 at 06:52 PM