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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 |
Robert Scheer had damning words for Bush today in light of his vocal support of Rumsfield after his questioning about the torture at Abu Ghraib and the release of the Taguba and Red Cross reports to the public:
On Monday, President Bush reiterated his unyielding support for Rumsfeld, even as the influential Army Times newspaper called for heads to roll "even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war." The abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad are "a failure that ran straight to the top," argued the newspaper.
And all of this does flow from the top. With the occupation itself built on a web of lies -- that invading Iraq was part of the war on terror, that Iraq had threatening weapons of mass destruction, that anybody who resisted the occupation was a "terrorist" or "thug" -- it can only be assumed that those interrogators dealing with the nearly 50,000 Iraqi detainees in the last year were under enormous pressure to produce statements that fit these phony "facts." [snip]
The big lie that the United States is merely a selfless battler against terrorists, with no other agendas, opens the door for brutality against any who dare resist. Bush has exercised an arrogance unmatched by any U.S. president in a century and brandished God's will as his carte blanche. His unilateral, preemptive "nation-building" -- and the settling of old scores in the name of fighting terror -- grants license to treat anybody, including U.S. citizens, in a barbaric manner that cavalierly sweeps aside all standards of due process.
Fallout Among Conservatives
The fallout of Abu Ghraib has not only incited the liberals but also the conservatives to voice indignation toward Bush, Rumsfield and the neocons. For example, the pro-Bush columnist Andrew Sullivan agrees that top heads must roll because of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Consider these comments compiled by Mark Follman of The Right Hook at Salon:
"The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one," writes Sullivan, who a year ago blasted opponents of the war as wobbly and myopic. "It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn't sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control. This was never going to be an easy venture ... and many of us have rallied to the administration's defense in difficult times, aware of the immense difficulties involved.
"But to have allowed the situation to slide into where we now are, to have a military so poorly managed and under-staffed that what we have seen out of Abu Ghraib was either the result of a) chaos, b) policy or c) some awful combination of the two, is inexcusable. It is a betrayal of all those soldiers who have done amazing work, who are genuine heroes, of all those Iraqis who have risked their lives for our and their future, of ordinary Americans who trusted their president and defense secretary to get this right. To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen -- after a year of other, compounded errors -- is unforgivable."
The New York Times columnist David Brooks also called his support into question:
"This has been a crushingly depressing period, especially for people who support the war in Iraq. The predictions people on my side made about the postwar world have not yet come true. The warnings others made about the fractious state of post-Saddam society have ... We went into Iraq with what, in retrospect, seems like a childish fantasy."
"Whose bright idea was it to keep Saddam's gulag open as a U.S. prison, anyway?
"It's hard not to be appalled by the Pentagon's blindness to the psychological catastrophe these photos were bound to create. Even [Friday], months after the atrocities were first known, Rumsfeld and company were incapable of answering the most elemental questions from John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others about who was in charge of the prison, and why the photos weren't immediately seen as weapons of mass morale destruction."
"Believe me, we've got even bigger problems than whether Rumsfeld keeps his job. We've got the problem of defining America's role in the world from here on out, because we are certainly not going to put ourselves through another year like this anytime soon. No matter how Iraq turns out, no president in the near future is going to want to send American troops into any global hot spot. This experience has been too searing ...
"We've got to acknowledge first that the old debates are obsolete. I wish the U.S could still go off, after Iraq, at the head of 'coalitions of the willing' to spread democracy around the world. But the brutal fact is that the events of the past year have discredited that approach."
In conclussion, I give you the analysis of Josh Micah Marshall in regards to the Congressional hearings on the Abu Ghraib incidents. He speaks first of Inhofe's extremely lame tirade and then finishes with kudos for a few Republicans who best understand what these abuses mean to America and the world:
...[H]ere you have Jim Inhofe lumbering out of his cave and on to the stage, arguing that we can do whatever we want because we're America. Inhofe's America is one that is glutted on pretension, cut free from all its moral ballast, and hungry to sit atop a world run only by violence. Lady Liberty gets left with fifty bucks, a sneer, a black eye, and the room to herself for the couple hours left before check out.
Yet there was a much brighter side to these hearings on Tuesday. For all the dishonor Inhofe brought on them, I was struck by how much of this is being carried by Republicans -- in particular, John McCain, John Warner and, perhaps most strikingly, Lindsey Graham.
Graham has become some mix of the star and the conscience of these proceedings because of his specialized knowledge as an Air Force JAG and his ability to see that this goes beyond partisan politics, threatening as it does not only America's honor, but (in a way someone like Inhofe could probably never understand) also her power.
Graham got it exactly right today when he said: "When you are the good guys, you've got to act like the good guys." [Emphasis mine.]
Another way to put this might be to say that being the good guys is about what you do, not who you are. That's a truth that the architects of this war, in subtler but I suspect more damaging ways, frequently failed to understand.
9:07:20 PM  | |
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Over the weekend, a local paper displayed the headline in large black and bold print: "Accountable," referring to Donald Rumsfield's comment to the Senate in relation to how he has handled the debacle of the detained Iraqis at Abu Ghraib. Of course, the GOP love to throw out these catch phrases that their own people in the media can latch onto and spit out for the general public. The only problem is this--the general public are not swallowing the propoganda so easily. Consider the latest CBS poll results as an indication that Americans are more and more leary of how Iraq is being handled and flat out that it wasn't worth it to begin with.
Regarding Rumsfield, I agree with Joe Conason's analysis in his journal printed today on Salon. Conason writes:
Somehow, [Rumsfield] found it within himself to express annoyance that anyone had dared to leak Gen. Antonio Taguba's "classified" report on Abu Ghraib, which he described as an illegal act. In response to questions from senators about the Red Cross report on the prison abuses, Rumsfeld suggested that the incriminating document should be withheld from public scrutiny.
Indeed, Rumsfeld personifies the ruinous combination of deception, arrogance and incompetence that has so badly damaged the war effort from the very beginning. His role has been so ruinous, in fact, that even some of the most enthusiastically hawkish pundits, such as George Will and Andrew Sullivan, are belatedly coming to recognize that utopian dreams of democratic imperialism have turned into a nightmare of colonial occupation. But the secretary of defense reflects nothing more or less than the president's policies and attitudes, which is why he still has his position.
How and when American troops should be extricated from Iraq remains a matter for intense debate. It is not at all clear that a precipitous pullout, leaving a torn nation to the mercies of warlords and armed mullahs, would serve the interests of Iraqis, Americans or the rest of the world. But what becomes clearer with each day is that we are in deep trouble -- and that the Bush administration possesses neither the will nor the ability to prevent the worst consequences of a failed policy. They have given Osama bin Laden a victory that he could never have won for himself.
You know, it has been hard for John Kerry to crack into the limelight because of the Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg's beheading. But today on the Don Imus show, Kerry commented on Rumsfield's testimony to the Senate. Kerry thinks Rumsfield should resign. Who does Kerry suggest would be a good candidate for the job? He explained that Senators John McCain and John Warner, for example, are highly qualified. Here's the text of his interview from the AP:
"If America has reached a point where only one person has the ability in our great democracy to manage the Pentagon and to continue or to put in place a better policy even, we're in deeper trouble than you think," Kerry told broadcaster Don Imus. "I don't accept that. I just don't accept that. I think that's an excuse. The fact is that we need a change in policy."
Asked who he would put in place as defense secretary, Kerry first named McCain, R-Ariz., and then listed Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Warner, R-Va., and William Perry, who served as defense secretary under President Clinton.
"There are any number of people who are unbelievably capable. This notion that we have to continue with a policy that's wrong and taking us down the wrong track is absurd," Kerry said.
I'm pleased to see that Kerry made the news with this. I think it is news that generates debate (something that is much needed in today's climate) and shows Kerry thinking on his feet. And you know, I think Kerry's suggestion is right on -- McCain would be an excellent choice to fill this role.
8:02:49 PM | |
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