A great American recently made some important points about the crisis facing our culture:

• “It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among western democracies, when those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and Nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored…”
• “This enemy is serious, lethal and relentless. But this is still not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters, there is more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.”
• “With the growing lethality and increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”

It’s not often that I agree so completely with a member of the Bush team, especially someone who has been as consistent and predictable a trainwreck as the speaker here, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld.

It is an odd and ironic artifact of the human intellect and its capacity for langauge, though, that allows one person to agree so wholeheartedly with another while disagreeing vehemently on the same issues. Clearly Rummy and I agree quite a lot about the what. As for the who, less…

However, with Debacle Decision ’06 looming, I feel it’s important to call our misleaders when they get all fork-tongued in public. So let’s be clear about the accusation here. Rummy is saying:

• Terrorism is like Naziism/Fascism
• People who oppose American policy are ignorant of history
• People who oppose Bush are appeasers

He doesn’t use the term “yellow-dog Liberals” or say outright that a vote against the GOP is a vote for bin Laden, but there is a well-established rhetorical/ideological context that suggests we’re not too far off the mark in inferring that sort of intent.

So let’s interrogate the charges.

Can we compare militant Islam to Naziism? Well, both are Bad Things®. Both present us with many people who need killing. But structurally, we’re probably not best advised to over-simplify when the one evil is the very manifestation of state-sponsorship – an archetypal high Modernist infrastructure – and the other is in many ways the very opposite – a distributed network organization (albeit one that draws on similarly powerful metanarratives) that seeks to dismantle many of the assumptions and artifacts of Modernity. At a “common man” level I see where he’s going, but when the fact:propaganda ratio is this diluted…

Are those who oppose Bush policy ignorant of history? This is 21st Century America we’re talking about – finding ignorance is about as hard as falling off an aircraft carrier and finding water. Of course, there’s a tremendous degree of ignorance fueling the development and enactment of those policies, too. While I’m a big fan of understanding history’s lessons (and there’s a damned sight to be learned by examining US Middle Eastern policy in the last few decades) you don’t really have to scroll back 70+ years to find the relevant history for this discussion. No, the real issue is the history of the last three or four years. The history of misunderstanding the challenge. Of underestimating the enemy. Of under-resourcing the forces sent to fight. Of lying about the rationale for war and attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and no WMDs. Of failing to conceive an exit strategy. Of declaring victory before the fight really even got started.

In short, the history of abject failure on the part of this administration’s foreign policy and defense machines. Those who oppose Bush’s little adventure may or may not know the first thing about history. They may be geniuses and they may be morons. But we’re not having this running war of words because of them, Rummy. We’re having it because of you.

Finally, are those who oppose Bush really appeasers? Seriously?

I wish a reporter at one of these shindigs would ask something like this: “Mr. Rumsfeld, can you give us an example of an organization or prominent Western political figure who wants to hand over some land to al Qaeda?” Or “who are some of these people who want to end our pursuit of terrorists and make up with bin Laden?” Or “can you explain how news organizations focusing on ‘bad news’ in a war zone where significant numbers of soldiers and innocents have died and continue to die somehow fits any known definition of the word ‘appeasement’?” Or “since pretty much all Americans are appalled by the actions of Islamic extremists, is it fair to say that your use of the term ‘moral confusion’ implies that it’s immoral to oppose policies that are ineffective and/or counterproductive?”

Mr. Rumsfeld, there is indeed a great deal of confusion in the world today and much of it is no doubt moral. You need not look to the ignorance of those responsible for record-low approval ratings to find it, though. I’m assuming your house has a mirror.

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