Leave Rummy Alone!
By Edward Daley (12/22/04)
A good friend of mine once pointed out to me that the first thing liberals do, after someone commits a crime with a gun, is try to disarm everyone who didn't do it. I found his words to be both insightful and troubling, and it's the same sort of pretzel logic to which he referred that has become evident over the past few years in the actions of the many left-wingers seeking to defame Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Apparently, leftists believe that Mr. Rumsfeld is somehow responsible for our military's lack of optimum preparedness, which is sort of like blaming your new gardener for failing to grow award-winning flowers in the rocky, nutrient-leached soil that your previous gardener neglected for nearly a decade. Once again these reactionary nitwits are focussing their attention in completely the wrong direction, and their motives for doing so are obviously political.
What they have refused to take into consideration (or simply won't admit to) is the fact that the Clinton Administration did so much damage to our defense infrastructure during the 90s, that we're lucky our current fighting force is as effective as it has proved to be. What we need to do now is recognize the folly of the previous administration's policies, and redouble our efforts to ensure that our military is the best trained and equipped possible.
The last thing we should be doing is pointing the finger of blame at Don Rumsfeld every time our military is faced with a new problem. In much the same way that attempting to restrict law abiding citizens from acquiring guns following the shooting spree of some crazed lunatic, attempting to hold the current Defense Secretary accountable for the failures of the previous one, is not only patently unfair, it's an utterly ineffectual means of improving the situation.
Furthermore, during times of war, our soldiers are going to find themselves in situations where they do not have everything we would prefer they had. That's just a sad fact of life on the front lines. Certainly we should do everything we can to provide them with whatever they need in the way of weapons, ammunition, food, clothing and protective gear, but there will always be times when certain troops will find themselves wanting for something.
As I write this article, I am reminded of the story of the Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter named Edward Lee Pitts, who fed a National Guardsman questions to ask of Secretary Rumsfeld during his visit to Kuwait earlier this month. The soldier, Spc. Thomas Wilson, inquired as to why he and other troops bound for combat in Iraq had to search through dumps in order to find the metal they needed to armor their humvees.
While I'm sure that Specialist Wilson was genuinely concerned about the issue, the reporter who prepared him for the Q&A session should have made it known who was really behind the question. What he essentially did was to create the news so that he could then report on it, and his reporting was sorely lacking in the factual data necessary to give his readers a clear picture of the situation.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/iwwl/pitts120904.html
What Mr. Pitts failed to mention when he wrote up his article concerning the issue, is that humvees were almost never armored before the Iraq War began. At the onset of the conflict, only a few hundred of them existed. Once it became clear that many thousands would eventually be needed, the Defense Department made sure that production of them was increased from just over a dozen a month in 2003 to several hundred a month this year. As it stands, three quarters of all the humvees in Iraq are now armored, and the government is doing everything it can to increase that percentage every day.
Once again it seems clear that a fair amount of anti-Bush Administration bias continues to wriggle it's way through the media coverage of the war, and people like Ed Pitts, who orchestrate news events for their own professional benefit should be ashamed of themselves. These individuals routinely tell half-truths about the state of our military's readiness and overall effectiveness, and it's about time someone put a stop to their deceitful practices.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that Mr. Rumsfeld is in any way perfect, or above reasonable criticism, but irrespective of his flaws, he's certainly doing a better job than his predecessor did, and under far more difficult circumstances. The constant badgering of the man, by many of the very liberals in this country who helped to cause most of our defense problems in the first place, is not only a highly hypocritical activity, it's a dangerous distraction from the things we urgently need to be concentrating on right now.
While it's appropriate from time to time to question the ability of anyone holding a position of power in this country, it is never acceptable to heap the kinds of gratuitous and petty criticisms upon a person that the liberals have piled on our Secretary of Defense lately. Just to give you an idea of the depths to which the left has stooped, a story which hit the wire services the other morning, and was retold ad nauseam throughout the day, painted the Secretary as some sort of monster simply because he used a signature machine to place his name on condolence letters sent to the families of deceased combat soldiers.
This is exactly the sort of non-issue that parasitic tabloid journalists and loud-mouthed political operatives gleefully run through their various spin machines, in order to hound good people like Donald Rumsfeld into premature retirement. Such behavior only proves just how lacking in seriousness these people can be, and how careless their attitudes toward matters of national security really are.
While liberals continue to play their inane political games in an ill-conceived attempt to regain some of the power they've lost in recent years, men like Secretary Rumsfeld are busy fighting a war on multiple fronts, and working out the plans for future military engagements designed to make our country more secure.
I find it hard to believe that any clear-minded individual could take seriously the incessant twaddle emanating from the far left at this crucial time in our history. Either liberals are truly incapable of appreciating the gravity of the situation we face, or they simply care more about their ideology than they do their fellow countrymen. But whatever the case, America's victory in Iraq is essential to the cause of winning the global war on terror, and those who refuse to accept that simple fact, while exhibiting contempt for the people currently charged with fighting that war, are in desperate need of an attitude adjustment.
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