Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Rumsfeld on the Spit
(Cross-posted at firedoglake, where I'm guest blogging.)

It began with the humiliation of General Shinseki.

“Rumsfeld has been contemptuous of the views of
senior military officers since the day he walked in as secretary of defense.
It's about time they got sick and tired,” Thomas E. White, the former
Army secretary, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. Mr. White was forced
out of his job by Mr. Rumsfeld in April of 2003. More
Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation

Donald Rumsfeld deserves the heat he's getting. That it's coming from a line
of retired generals means even more.

In the end, we found out that Colin Powell didn't have what it takes to
lead, playing the “good soldier” to the end, hah. Today,
however, it's clear many in the military have simply had it with Rumsfeld's
weak and cowardly brand of “leadership,” which has unfolded from a
quick war win into a murderous civil war, with American honor and integrity
one of the casualties. Of course, the commander in chief deserves most of the
blame, if you're a member of the Harry Truman club, where the buck stops with
the boss. But the man who has been most responsible for implementing military
policy in Iraq is none other than Donald “stuff happens” Rumsfeld

Quite a few retired generals have had it and we may not have seen or heard
the last of it.

The White House has dismissed the criticism, saying
it merely reflects tensions over the war in Iraq. There was no indication
that Mr. Rumsfeld was considering resigning.

“The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is
doing a very fine job during a challenging period in our nation's history,”
the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters on Thursday.

Among the retired generals who have called for Mr.
Rumsfeld's ouster, some have emphasized that they still believe it was right
for the United States to invade Iraq. But a common thread in their complaints
has been an assertion that Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides too often inserted themselves
unnecessarily into military decisionmaking, often disregarding advice from
military commanders.

The outcry also appears based in part on a coalescing
of concern about the toll that the war is taking on American armed forces,
with little sign, three years after the invasion, that United States troops
will be able to withdraw in large numbers anytime soon.

Pentagon officials, while acknowledging that Mr. Rumsfeld's
forceful style has sometimes ruffled his military subordinates, played down
the idea that he was overriding the advice of his military commanders or ignoring
their views. (source)

Others would disagree.

There's Lt.
General Gregory Newbold, retired director of operations at the Pentagon's
military joint staff; Paul
D. Eaton who served in Iraq and trained the Iraqi army; former general Anthony
Zinni; and retired
Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who wouldn't take another star to stay in Iraq
because of Rummy; now Maj.
Gen. Charles Swannack joins them. (Also see Batiste's
interviews on the morning shows.)

That's an impressive group, but you can't forget the Fighting
Dems either. Over 50 veterans of both the Iraq and Vietnam wars who are
running as Democrats in 2006 because of the Iraq war.

Generals disapprove of the war, but the treatment
of the military since Bush, Rummy and Deadeye have been in charge cannot be
lost on the generals and other leaders in the U.S. military. There's the body
armor debacle. Over 30,000 soldiers, at last count, have come home with
PTSD. But
something rarely talked about, but very important, is the affect of the Bush
administration's policies on military
families. Then to add insult to injury, there was the death of Pat Tillman,
which added more grief on top of tragedy to a family already experiencing more
than their share of pain.

Sure, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shares the blame with many in the
Bush administration, especially the boss, all of whom have shown such abject
incompetence on Iraq that it should have led to their ouster in 2004 on that
issue alone. But it didn't. We can only hope that Rumsfeld is getting the message
and does the right thing for this country, because it's long past time for him
to go.