“Definition Of Patriotism: Happiness When The US Defeats The Enemy” [Reader Post]

DEFEAT they name is Democrat’

Patriotism = My country is best, always! There is no equal and we intend to keep it that way!

The left cannot grasp that idea.

You’re right, and that’s because it’s a childlike definition. A more appropriate version for grownups would be something like, “Patriotism=wanting my country to be the best, always–keeping the good stuff good and improving everything that’s not yet good enough.”

“Childlike, huh? Your sense of superiority is showing. I realize the people in your party think they are mentally and morally so much better then republicans but it really isn’t true. Think about it. All your plans and promises have come to nothing. We are winning the war, FISA passed, funding the war passed and with all the dims’ show trials they have proved nothing about their charges about Bush. Pelosi has been exposed as not only a traiter actively sabotaging one of our allies but subverting our own government by refusing to put on the floor for a vote the treaty with Columbia. McGovern has been exposed as a go between for Pelosi and FARC. All these corruptions practiced by democrats are coming out now. The press doen’t put a D after their names but the people who voted these jerks in know what their party is.
It may be that the voters in these areas like corruption and they would have to to let them back in but what does that say about the members of your party. Anything goes? Whatever works? We have long known this is the democrat mantra. Superior? I think not.

Heh. A little off-topic, perhaps? A little–how shall one say?–ranty?

Should a grownup wish to discuss the issue in a grownup fashion, I’ll be over here in the corner.

Dave, Dems today are very different from the Dems of (even as recent as) the Kennedy years. Kennedy, of course, the guy who took us into Vietnam. You know, that war the Dems like to bring up every other day as another major “quagmire”?

But of course, they don’t take responsibility for being the party that started the war they so love to detest. But they do take pride in our Vietnman “defeat” by successfully manipulating the US propaganda war. Nixon? A not-so-bright-corrupt-wuss-who-got-caught, and caved to that public opinion. He was no leader who could inspire. And the Pentagon never allowed our guys to fight with both hands.

By contrast, today’s Dems are indeed synonymous with defeat … unless, of course, it’s a DNC president who takes us in to the war. (repeat after me… rah rah Clinton…) But they’ve taken that perceived win-by-defeat of Vietnam, and carried that banner for decades into today.

One need only look back on recent quotes of the DNC leadership in the past years to note their premature call of US failure. We need only examine DNC proposed legislation designed specifically to thwart the military’s possible success at every turn.

And just so you know I’m not partisan on my disgust, it was under a GOP-led Congress that Clinton managed to gut our military and our intel. I will not forgive them for that either. As far as I’m concerned, Congress is scum… and I remain unanimous in that.

But as far as your “drop the rhetoric, pick up a history book” comment? History is not stagnant, and parties morph. Do not be so misguided as to compare your DNC today with the DNC of yesteryear. That sheeet hit the fan decades ago.

ahhh… a pleasure to meet another “are you being served” fan…. LOL Yessir. You got it! I shall refrain from her favorite jokes, however, in the interest of a G-rated site.

And don’t you be insulting my bud, Mr. Humphries!

Now Mike… not many here may know of Mrs. Slocum and her favorite feline… nor the jokes that constantly get her into such a Monty Python’esque pickle in the department store! LOL

Dave Noble wrote:

Richard Nixon pulled us out of Vietnam.

But Nixon also gave our South Vietnamese allies a solemn pledge, in writing, that if the North broke agreements in the Paris Peace Accords, and invaded the South, America would get back in, and provide whatever aid the South needed; even troop support. Unfortunately for the South Vietnamese, Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal. When the North Vietnamese invaded the South, Ford pleaded with Congress to enforce our agreements and honor our pledge to our South Vietnamese allies. In 1975, more than one million innocent Vietnamese fled in terror from a massive invasion by the North. And Congress and the anti-war movement did nothing to alleviate the suffering.

Mata,

Vietnam was a quagmire. There is more than enough blame to go around on both sides of the aisle with respect to Vietnam. I think you overgeneralize when you suggest that “Democrats take pride in our defeat.” I am a Democrat and I dont’ think I’m alone in taking no pride in a war that cost 55,000 American lives and over 2 million Vietnamese lives.

We need only examine DNC proposed legislation designed specifically to thwart the military’s possible success at every turn. Please substantiate. Specifically, that it was “designed to thwart the military’s success.” I would argue that was the result of the Bush administrations rank ineptitude.

Further, I think you grossly overstate the Democratic party’s interest in defeat in Iraq. I don’t deny the existence of craven political motives on the part of some Democrats. But remember, the majority of Democrats supported the war (which I think was a mistake). They turned on it after a Bush administration war effort led by arguably the worse Defense Secretary in history (John McCain on Donald Rumsfeld), an ivory tower academic (me on Paul Wolfowitz) and the dumbest m-f on earth (Gen. Tommy Franks on Douglas Feith) doomed the war to failure.

I stand by my position that Yo’s comment was not only historically inaccurate, it was bumper sticker rhetoric that takes the discussion nowhere.

Just a teaser – Woodrow Wilson was an internationalist who promoted the precursor of the UN and FDR was a died-in-the wool crimson Marxist by the standard of most of the bloggers on this cite. Maybe the Democratic Party hasn’t changed that much.

Mata,

First, in the case of Iraq 2008, “surrender” is a misnomer. Just as “defeat” is. You can’t surrender in an occupation. Nor can you be defeated in an occupation. That’s at the core of the problem in Iraq — although our soldiers are dying, they are not in a war. They are engaged in nation-building, while harassed (and I do not mean to use that in any minimizing manner. That harassment involves bullets and bombs) by a maddeningly complex insurgency that includes former soldiers of the Saddam regime who followed orders and melted away to fight again, religious militias, common criminals, and last, but not least, foreign fighters to include those loyal to Al Quaeda.

Lest I digress from responding to your post: Respectfully, you again make unsupported partisan generalizations about the Democratic Party’s (no assembly of saints in my book, but fair’s fair) “pleasure” in our failure in Vietnam. Who takes pleasure in our failure in Vietnam? Further, who denies the role of Democratic presidents in furthering the war? After Eisenhower’s refusal to assist the French at Dien Bien Phu, JFK got us in and LBJ escalated and kept us there until Nixon promised “Peace with Honor” Those are indisutable historical facts.

With respect to going in light (or half-assed, to be less polite), I would agree that you should go in all the way or not at all. I think Colin Powell (the red-headed stepchild of the Bush administration) had it right. Go in to win, or stay home. I’m sure you would agree we made the same mistake in Iraq. But don’t forget that a nuclear exchange with Russia or a land war with China was considered a real possibility in the 60’s and early 70’s. In that light JFK and LBJ can be forgiven their reluctance to go pedal to the metal.

Sometime, let’s talk about how Iraq is like (or unlike) Vietnam.

MataHarley repeats a tired old fantasy:

We went in – half heartedly – hoping to prevent a fully communist Vietnam from over running other SE Asian countries. We refused to fight with our full capabilities for fear of China and Russian coming in to play. The “quagmire” was the lack of full commitment. You either play to win, or don’t play. That “quagmire” was constructed by the DNC trying to play war politically correct. It’s a bad habit they have yet to break.

I know some folks are still disappointed we didn’t go nuclear.

Nothing ‘half-hearted’ about that eh?

I am a Democrat and I dont’ think I’m alone in taking no pride in a war that cost 55,000 American lives and over 2 million Vietnamese lives.

And as a Democrat, that is how you characterize Vietnam. Contrast it with

# 91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served (Westmoreland papers)
# 74% said they would serve again even knowing the outcome (Westmoreland papers)

Dave Noble writes:

Further, I think you grossly overstate the Democratic party’s interest in defeat in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the Party has boxed itself into this corner. They have a vested interest, politically, in painting Iraq as “a lost war”, and nothing but. Success in Iraq, no matter if it’s undeserved, will vindicate the legacy of George W. Bush.

This isn’t to say that Democrats are consciously rooting for every IED to go off, every suicide bomber to validate their “war is lost” meme and “bring the troops home now” position. But they have definitely invested themselves politically in Iraq being a failure.

I don’t deny the existence of craven political motives on the part of some Democrats. But remember, the majority of Democrats supported the war (which I think was a mistake).

And for craven political cowardice, want to rewrite history, or absolve themselves of responsibility and point fingers saying they were misled by the President.

They turned on it after a Bush administration war effort led by arguably the worse Defense Secretary in history (John McCain on Donald Rumsfeld),

Yes, arguable.

and the dumbest m-f on earth (Gen. Tommy Franks on Douglas Feith)

Here’s something else Franks said:

On the April 14, 2006 edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews, Franks changed his assessment of Feith:

MATTHEWS: What did you think on a scale of one to 10 of the military expertise, of the civilians surrounding Secretary Rumsfeld, the people like Wolfowitz and Feith? How would you on a scale of 1 to 10, where would you put their military savvy?

FRANKS: I would put the dipstick at oh — with a reasonable degree of understanding, I would put Doug Feith in a category as a brilliant man with some military understanding, but both of these gentlemen were apt to think out of the box. And candidly, Chris, for all I know, maybe that’s what Don Rumsfeld wanted them to do.

MATTHEWS: Were they ideologues or were they analysts?

FRANKS: In my personal [opinion], they were analysts. Now, that does not imply that I’m making some statement that they were not ideologues, maybe so, but that’s not the way that I saw them.

Here’s how a session would go. I would come in, sit down with the secretary and there would be six or eight people in the room, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the vice chairman, the deputy secretary and on many occasions, Doug Feith. I’d begin. The secretary would say, OK, Franks, what do you have for us today?

I’d begin to describe some piece of the planning that had been undertaken over the previous week or month, and the secretary would make a challenging comment. We’d begin to discuss the challenging comment, and then the deputy secretary or perhaps Doug Feith would ask a question that in my view was not directly related to the issue at hand.

Now, in their minds from an analytical perspective, I’m sure it was, but I found it to be distracting. And from time to time, I would look at the secretary and say, Mr. Secretary, would you like me to answer you or them? And so we had these kinds of discussions,, and I think had any outsider watched this dialogue, he would have said, oh, this general is going to be thrown out of the room any minute. But in fact, it was a rather professional relationship.

I’ve sometimes cussed out friends of mine. Unfortunately, since I’m a low profile citizen, none of it was seized upon and propagandized to make me appear to hate my friends.

Why not just come out and say “I Dave Noble consider Rumsfeld the worst secretary of defense in history”? Why obscure it behind McCain? Franks certainly doesn’t hold that view.

doomed the war to failure.

Proof please that

1. The war has been a failure.
2. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith are responsible for it.

You can’t surrender in an occupation. Nor can you be defeated in an occupation.

If we withdraw from Iraq under Democratic reasoning and propositioning, what would the perception be? Not just from world opinion, but from our allies who rely upon us to have backbone, but from al Qaeda and Islamic holy warriors? Would it have an emboldening effect? What happened as a result of the Lion’s Den when the perception of a Soviet defeat at the hands of bin Laden’s mujahadeen took place? Did it help jihadi recruitment or impair it? The propaganda gains for America’s enemies would be enormous should we withdraw because of how you perceive the occupation as nothing more than “our soldiers are dying”.

That’s at the core of the problem in Iraq — although our soldiers are dying, they are not in a war.

You make it sound like our soldiers are out there, dropping like flies. Victims and nothing more.

Who takes pleasure in our failure in Vietnam?

I’d say it’s more about the anti-war left proud of their role over Vietnam. Theirs wasn’t a “peace” movement so much as it was an “anti-draft” movement.

My “usual” name calling? LOL. Get serious, Arthur. I reserve my “name calling” for a chosen few… and only then when I bother to acknowledge your post exists. There’s a few of you who mistakenly think I give a flying whit about your utterings. Why I bothered this time is beyond me.

Bomb tonnage as a measure of effort in a guerilla warfare ground conflict. Brilliant…

I was correct earlier. You are an extremist fool. And that’s being kind.

MataH a name caller? Oh please! She bends over backwards to be nice to you lefties and that’s the thanks she gets.

Arthur S. Stone you really are an A.S.S.

Word,

I apologize to you as well for my delayed response.

First, the fatality figures I quote have absolutely nothing to do with my being a Democrat. They are tragic facts.

With respect to your figures. Look at the site you got this from. There is no reason to take this as a credible source. It’s a site maintained by a group of Navy vets who served on the USS Boston. I respect their service, but I have absolutely no reason to trust the veracity of their figures, especially these.

Do you know what the “Westmoreland papers” are? On the face of it can you think of how such a survey would be taken?

Finally, assuming for the sake of argument that these figures are correct, why do they present a more accurate picture of the Vietnam War than my figures?

“And for craven political cowardice, [many Democrats]want to rewrite history, or absolve themselves of responsibility and point fingers saying they were misled by the President.”

I won’t argue that now. There is truth in what you say. But I have no doubt that the President misled the American people.

First Rumsfeld, then Feith:

I Dave Noble, believe that Donald Rumsfeld tenure as SecDef represents a catastrophic combination of arrogance and ineptitude – a fatal combination in anyone who is a leader, particularly when they are leading our men into war. Please refer to my response to Mata above. I will move on from there. When the looting started in Baghdad, he infamously commented that freedom was untidy and free people sometimes do bad things. That comment evidences an Olympian detachment from reality worthy of Marie Antoinette and should go down in the annals of “When Smart People Say Stupid Things.” Going on from those early days after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld stood by as things spun out of control and never changed an obviously ineffective strategy for fighting the insurgency. I agree the surge is a military success. Why did it take so long to figure out Gen. Shinseki was right about our needing more troops?

Douglas Feith, as head of the Office of Special Plans was responsible for post war planning. An objective observer could be forgiven for asking “They planned for the post war?” The awkward transition from Jay Garner and his OHRA to Paul Bremer and the CPA a little more than two months after Saddam’s statue fell is emblematic of the confusion and indecision Feith presided over.

I will concede the war cannot be called a failure at present. What I meant was that the misguided policies of RWF set our troops up for failure.

Instead of picking up where France left off in a dirty colonial war we should have remained true to our principles and let the Vietnamese have their election in 1955 (Ho Chi Minh by a landslide) and live with the results.

We remained true to our principles, by intervening on behalf of freedom and against the forces of international communism. Why did the U.S. block the election? It wasn’t because we didn’t trust democracy; it was because we didn’t trust communism. Two reasons why the communists would have won in ‘56:

1)The North under communist dominion had a larger population.
2)In North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, there was absolutely no free votes of any kind.

From declassified Soviet files we have available today, we now know that they summarily murdered anywhere from 10,000 to a million people for the crime of opposing communism. So, if you have a larger population in the North where there is no freedom whatsoever- no freedom of opposition and protest, no freedom of vote, resulting in a 100% vote for communism…you really think going forward with a nationwide election would have been anything other than a stolen “election” and a theatrical farce?

Dave Noble wrote:

Word,

I apologize to you as well for my delayed response.

No need. We all lead busy lives and engage on multiple blogs in multiple comments sections. I wouldn’t have even remembered this thread, had you not replied.

First, the fatality figures I quote have absolutely nothing to do with my being a Democrat. They are tragic facts.

I wasn’t disparaging your party affiliation; but noted your perception of the Vietnam conflict, summed up as nothing more than body counting.

With respect to your figures. Look at the site you got this from. There is no reason to take this as a credible source. It’s a site maintained by a group of Navy vets who served on the USS Boston. I respect their service, but I have absolutely no reason to trust the veracity of their figures, especially these.

Why dismiss credibility on the sole basis of perceived partisanship, unless the source cited has already been proven to have flawed/falsified information?

I’ve seen some other studies with similar findings; like this 1980 Harris Poll, cited by Senator James Webb:

While this might have fit a small minority, the most accurate survey, done by the Harris Poll in 1980, showed that 91% of those who went to Vietnam were “glad they served their country,” 74% “enjoyed their time in the military” and 89% agreed with the statement that “our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win.”

The poll also found something like 79 percent denying that the United States had taken advantage of them.

Do you know what the “Westmoreland papers” are? On the face of it can you think of how such a survey would be taken?

I am only superficially familiar with the Westmoreland papers.

Finally, assuming for the sake of argument that these figures are correct, why do they present a more accurate picture of the Vietnam War than my figures?

It’s not about my having more accurate figures; it’s about how one perceives the Vietnam Battle and it’s place in history, what it accomplished and failed to accomplish. It’s more than just tallying up bodies. It’s like looking at a glass half empty or a glass half full. You “take no pride in a war”, and it’s obvious by how you sum it up: through body count figures.

But I have no doubt that the President misled the American people.

I’ve never once felt misled, even to this day. Except by Rockefeller and company.

First Rumsfeld, then Feith:

I Dave Noble, believe that Donald Rumsfeld tenure as SecDef represents a catastrophic combination of arrogance and ineptitude – a fatal combination in anyone who is a leader, particularly when they are leading our men into war. Please refer to my response to Mata above. I will move on from there. When the looting started in Baghdad, he infamously commented that freedom was untidy and free people sometimes do bad things.

Abrasive, but honest and plainspoken, no? Not blindly optimistic, surely. Even good wars are a messy business, and not without their side effects.

With regard to the criticism over the looting….Iraqis could have been throwing trash on the ground, and I think the anti-war/anti-Bush critics would have been wailing about it, and our incompetence in foresight in not having garbage trucks in place to deal with the mass littering.

Every setback, everything that did not fit neatly into a flawless plan has had a magnifying glass of criticism to turn molehills into mountains, compounding the problem by influencing public opinion with media hysteria.

Going on from those early days after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld stood by as things spun out of control and never changed an obviously ineffective strategy for fighting the insurgency.

To simply say he “stood by” as though twiddling his thumbs is a gross partisan comment. What amazes me is all the arm-chair generalship by those who don’t have all the facts and who weren’t present in the war room meetings.

In my uninformed armchair opinion, Rumsfeld’s streamlined, quick approach to overrunning Baghdad was brilliant. He was willing to think outside the box. The aftermath of OIF major combat operations is a bit more complex, including criticism over the disbanding of the Iraq Army and police, post-war planning. I don’t want to type out more than I have to, so moving on….next point:

I agree the surge is a military success. Why did it take so long to figure out Gen. Shinseki was right about our needing more troops?

Rumsfeld was willing to give General Franks and Abizaid all the troops they needed. Generals unhappy with troop numbers (especially those in 20/20 hindsight, and those who were did not take part in war planning and are therefore not privy to the back-and-forth discussions) didn’t fail to convince Rumsfeld; they failed to convince Abizaid or Franks for requesting more troops.

Douglas Feith, as head of the Office of Special Plans was responsible for post war planning. An objective observer could be forgiven for asking “They planned for the post war?” The awkward transition from Jay Garner and his OHRA to Paul Bremer and the CPA a little more than two months after Saddam’s statue fell is emblematic of the confusion and indecision Feith presided over.

I would level more than a fair share of criticism to officials within the CIA and State who were never on board with the original post-war plannings, including the 300 page OPLAN 10-03 postwar reconstruction blue print.

In the end, more than one or a handful of individuals deserve their fair share of blame and responsibility. I for one would like to hold the NYTimes accountable (31 or was it 33 consecutive frontpage stories over abu Ghraib, during a time of war?! How did the sensationalism and media incitement affect jihadi recruitment and public opinion? How many soldiers lost their lives as a direct and indirect result?).

I wonder if there was this level of witch hunt finger point blame-gaming over the disastrous Normandy Invasion plannings? In life and in war, s**t happens, to take a Rumsfeldian matter-of-factness point of view. Things go wrong, and plans seldom survive intact after the first contact.

Wordsmith typed:

Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal.

As a stickler for the facts you know perfectly well this is a feeble explanation for the end of Nixon’s presidency . You make it sound as if some natural force, illness or bad weather caused Dick to have to give up before his work was finished. In fact Dick was a criminal and he resigned in order to to avoid publicly defending himself and allowing all the details of his crimes to come to light.

Oh and the pardon helped him ease into retirement quite nicely.

But do you believe the soldiers’ commitment to the mission validates the mission?

Aside from my actually believing in the mission, I think many of the soldiers, regardless of feelings on whether we should have invaded or not, want to achieve victory and success, if nothing more than to insure that their fellow warriors didn’t die in vain. When one talks of the war only in terms of the latest body count, and we leave prematurely, then the war will be measured only in body count and disgrace. For the sacrifices made, for them to have real historical significance in sacrifice, then we should all be rooting for “staying the course” to success in Iraq. In being able to leave there on our terms, because we fulfilled a moral obligation to the people of Iraq for the hell they have gone through these last 5 years.

I for one don’t believe American forces should ever be committed unless it’s directly related to the defense of American interests and protection. (However, consider this, and what is gained by American interventionism in the world) If you were against the war before it started, fine. If you had criticism for how the war was conducted along the way, fine. But once the decision was made, we should all be rooting for victory, with criticism constructively aimed toward fulfilling that victory. Not damaging criticism based upon partisan politics, aimed at undermining the effort to succeed, because you crave a Bush defeat more than you care for an American victory.

Especially in light of the surge gains in success. Diwaniyah Province is now the 10th Province handed over to the Iraqi government for control. So many people are still basing their opinions upon ‘05 and ‘06 beliefs and perceptions about the situation in Iraq. The war ended. The civil war never came to full fruition. The insurgency is exhaling its last breath. Does that mean future problems won’t erupt? The future is unknowable. We aren’t responsible for the entire course of Iraq for the rest of its history. But we are responsible for the aftermath of the root canal we gave them in extracting Saddam from abscessing another 30 years upon the world, along with his murderous sons.

That places an even greater burden on their leaders to ensure the mission is worth their lives and further that it bears a reasonable chance of success. In both Vietnam and Iraq, this was not the case.

You don’t think Iraq has a “reasonable chance of success”? You don’t think that leaders have set us on the right course by implementing the military surge in troops to enable a more stable environment for a budding government to take root?

Let me be blunter still about Donald Rumsfeld. He was a fool. He makes George Custer look like a brilliant tactician. His “Stuff happens” was tantamount to Alfred E. Neuman’s “What, me worry?” And his foolhardy management of the war put us where we are now, costing American and Iraqi lives. Why need that be a partisan analysis?

It need not be, if you are willing to delve into the pages of Douglas Feith’s book, “War and Decision” with an open mind before you fully judge and condemn. This is Feith’s perspective and version of events, as well as his assessment of Rumsfeld. I actually think it is an important contribution to the dialogue and the history of events, adding much to the picture. One can read it with a critical mind, but it should be read. It may surprise you. Timmerman’s book (”Shadow Warriors”) has the flavor of partisanship laced throughout its pages. Feith’s comes across as very mature and serious in its tone and its language, as one might expect from a book of academia.

We won the war, but we lost the occupation from the getgo. And none of it was the fault of our superlative troops.

There’s plenty of blame-handing to go around. The buck stops with the President, but there were many things outside the ability of Bush and Rumsfeld to control. You can have the best planning, and still, Murphy’s Law will find a way to step in; your enemies will find a way to make sure that your original plans do not survive after first contact.

How much damage did the few at abu Ghraib do to our efforts in Iraq? Yes, you can go up the chain of command, back to where the buck stops, but direct responsibility is with those bad apples who made it into the military. And how much did the media obsessing and magnifying glassing abu Ghraib, contriibuted to inflaming the Arab world and influencing world opinion and public support against us? 31 consecutive frontpage NYTimes articles?! That as much as anything, created more terrorists. The reality is, we have been the ones trying to rebuild churches, mosques, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and all else to HELP the Iraqi people. No, instead young Muslims received anti-American propaganda to fuel jihadism.

With respect to the CIA and State, weren’t they under the control of the President?

CIA and State have had officials in key positions who have worked to undermine the President and this Administration. Some is pure, political partisanship. Some is due to conflicting ideas (for instance, the State and CIA were at odds with the Pentagon and White House over how to enable regime change in Iraq. CIA and State leaned toward the idea of bringing about a coup, rather than invasion).

You attempt to use infighting and confusion within the President’s own administration to get the President off the hook. Ultimately, the buck for the planning failures stops on the Oval Office desk.

Of course. And in his SotU 2007 address, he claimed responsibility for where mistakes were had. But when Garner calls in to Feith because CENTCOM is not meshing with ORHA and has logistical needs (when ORHA was supposed to be integrated under CENTCOM, not supplant it in Phase IV planning and operations), should Rumsfeld be micromanaging with providing Garner with trucks and equipment he needs? What of Paul Bremer’s unilateral decisions (yes, the buck stops with Bush)? Effectively changing the original liberation plans into an occupation?

That is one of the fatal flaws of President Bush. He has proven incapable of managing a “team of rivals”, to use Doris Kearns Goodwin’s phrase to describe President Lincoln’s administration.

Sounds perhaps right.

Was Rumsfeld twiddling his thumbs? No he was standing at his desk firing off memos, strutting around the Pentagon barking orders, and perched smugly behind a podium making blithe comments to the media. Meanwhile Iraq was burning.

I think the media is given in to hysteria and sensationalism. We also have so much more access to instantaneous and graphic information than was available to the American public decades ago. Our leaders are under a microscope, and news events are magnified, so that every setback makes it seem like the sky is falling. How would we get through the Normandy Invasion today? I think, like Bush, history will be a wee bit kinder when looking back upon Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense during the Bush Administration. A lot of what’s been written about Rumsfeld, thus far, have been written by his critics and political opponents.