ShareThisBy JAY AMBROSE
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
In my school days, it was often the best teachers my classmates most disliked, the ones who required you to learn no matter how much work it took, quickly caught on to your tricks and put up with no nonsense.
The less demanding teachers _ those most inclined to let your mind go mushy on their watch _ were frequently the ones more celebrated.
My suspicion is that some similar desire for comfort over excellence is a reason many in the Pentagon didn't much care for Donald Rumsfeld, a secretary of defense with a noted intolerance for generals who came calling with nothing important to say and for bureaucratically espoused military strategies that made increasingly less sense in our rapidly changing world.
Even if that is so _ and even if Rumsfeld became a scapegoat for mistakes that were not his doing and the sort of setbacks that were his responsibility but are also encountered in virtually every war ever fought _ President Bush was right to announce his replacement, and to do it when he did it, the day after it became known Democrats were to regain control of Congress. During their campaigns, Democrats told the voters that the war in Iraq was an ungodly mess, and on Election Day, the voters told the Democrats, "We agree."
By giving the Democrats this change, the ouster of a man they had vilified, Bush quiets them down for a moment, signals a cooperative spirit, lets the public know he is doing some serious rethinking about things and buys time to find better answers in this war that is indeed going badly. Whatever Rumsfeld's virtues, no one person is vital to winning the war, whereas one person's departure could be.
Bush must obviously not stop with a shuffling of chairs, but in fact listen carefully to a commission that will soon be reporting on possible new approaches in Iraq, and insist that the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, come to him with fresh and varied options. This administration, the policies of which are often better than its defense of them, must also get far more skillful at the art of careful, intelligent public explanation.
The appropriate response by the Democrats? It is certainly not to take each and every criticism and stick it in a closet, but it is to get as serious as their regained power and the hour require.
They should turn their backs on those anti-Bush allegations astonishing in their vitriol and intellectual disrepair _ the calumny that the war is purely about enriching U.S. oil companies, for one _ and work with the administration to find ways that would leave a stable, peaceful, decent and strong government in power in Iraq when U.S. troops are gone.
Anything less than that, such as a phased withdrawal disconnected from improvements in internal Iraqi order, is an invitation to genocidal disaster and could be a boost for terrorist aspirations worldwide.
As for congressional Republicans, soon to be a minority in both the House and Senate, their need is not to sulk or hide out or resort to potshot politics on war stances or any other issue, but to rediscover their principles and stick to them.
The war was not the only factor in what happened to them Tuesday. A lesson they should have learned from the vote is that the wages of political sin can be political diminution _ that a pledge to end corruption and extravagant spending in Congress should not be followed by your own corruption and extravagant spending on penalty of losing elections. While their voice on Iraq is diminished, it is hardly eradicated, and if it is informed by conviction and alert analysis, it can still be highly important in determining the course of events.
Bush's decision on Rumsfeld opens a door for the kind of give and take and reconsiderations that could eventuate in winning the Iraqi war if all sides will move forward in good faith while putting the national interest above their own.
(Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay(at)aol.com.)
Bush's Rummy Ouster: Gesture of Grace?
To extend your "school days" analogy, what would it say about the quality of a teacher (as opposed to popularity) who was drummed out of the job by the school board and the state certifying agency? In essence that's what happened to Rumsfeld, when general after general called the Secretary of Defense incompetent. That's what happened when the four branches of the military published editorials saying that the Secretary of Defense must go. Based on these multiple and loud outcries from within the military, I'm not sure where you're getting the attribute "excellence" to describe Rumsfeld in his role as Secretary of Defense.
You note that Bush's timing in calling for Rumsfeld's resignation signals, in part, the president's willingness to work with the new, Democratic majority government. This move also has a scent of getting the criminal out of the crime scene before the cops arrive. Bush is certainly not and has never been a president who makes overtures of manner or signals a sense or a willingness to cooperate. Why now? Possibly Mr. Bush is doing a little "cut and run" move of his own by sweeping Rummy under a rug and thereby saving the Secretary, the government and the public at large a potentially unpleasant and long look at wartime policy and actions that, to say the least, could be interpreted as wholly inappropriate in terms of combat and intelligence gathering.
I hope for the sake of the troops, their families, and for the future of a non-hegemonious (or, probably more realistically, less hegemonious) United States, Bush and the Dems will work together--closely and sincerely--to bring about a sensible but definite withdrawal and disentanglement from Iraq.
There are terrorists, and terrorists are bad, but please let's recognize there are probably 20 other major issues in this country that sorely demand time, energy, attention and funding if we're to have any sort of livable society 50 years hence.