- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is proving to be
a fount of bad ideas. If he isn't careful, he might rival Robert McNamara
as one of the worst SecDefs in history.
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- Recently, word leaked out that a major test of U.S. armed
forces was rigged. A now-retired general assigned to lead the opposition
forces not only made a monkey out of the armed forces in the actual exercise
but blew the whistle on the fact that the exercise was rigged.
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- This means that rather than use an exercise to uncover
errors and flaws that can be corrected before they cost lives in real combat,
Rumsfeld and his generals preferred to put on a charade and then boast
of a phony success.
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- Rumsfeld is also contemptuous of the Gulf War and seems
to be under the illusion that he can drop light forces into Baghdad and
easily dispose of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps he'd better read "The Charge
of the Light Brigade," or at least refresh himself on the disastrous
battle of Gallipoli in which an arrogant Winston Churchill seriously underestimated
the fighting ability of the Turkish army.
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- Our great strengths are air power and our advanced tanks,
neither of which will be of great advantage in an urban-warfare setting.
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- Rumsfeld also wants to use American troops on the kinds
of missions traditionally done by covert operatives of the Central Intelligence
Agency. This would be a mistake for two reasons.
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- The CIA is held accountable. It can't undertake a covert
mission without a signed "finding" from the president and without
the oversight of congressional committees. The military would not be accountable,
except to Rumsfeld. He apparently would like to operate his own private,
global "Murder Inc.," going into countries with which we are
not at war.
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- The problem here is that when a soldier takes off his
uniform, he takes off the protection of the Geneva Accords and can be summarily
executed as a spy or an assassin if captured in civilian clothes. The American
people should not allow an arrogant man, irritated by the restraints of
international law and the Constitution, to put our soldiers in such a position.
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- Unfortunately, both Rumsfeld and President Bush seem
disinclined to listen to any advice but their own. If either man were a
genius, it might not be so bad. Being bright, ruthless and ambitious, however,
is not the equivalent of genius. Nor is self-righteousness a guarantee
of being either correct or righteous.
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- It's now clear that this administration intends to go
its own way, in disregard of international law, the Constitution and the
advice of our longtime allies. It has neither a proper authorization for
war nor even a definition of victory. It has simply embarked upon an open-ended
power play in which the so-called war on terrorism is used simply as an
excuse to do whatever it wants to do. If the administration likes some
foreign tyrant, it gives him carte blanche to crush his domestic opposition
in the name of fighting terrorism. If it doesn't like a foreign tyrant,
it uses democracy as a weapon to demonize him. This, of course, gives democracy
itself a bad name and gives us the stench of hypocrisy.
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- We should not allow this administration to wreck 50 years
of alliances, spit on international law, disregard the Constitution and
endanger the civil liberties of the American people. If we do, even if
terrorism were eliminated, it would prove to be a hollow victory.
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- But terrorism won't be eliminated, because this administration
is doing nothing to eliminate its causes. On the contrary, it seems to
go out of its way to give new people a new reason for hating us.
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- 2002by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020826/index.php
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