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August 07, 2005

Why Weekly Standard Editor is on Donald Rumsfeld's Case

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, an influential, conservative publication that strongly supported, and still does, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, takes a shot at U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for proposing that the word "war" be dropped from the so-called "war on terror." Mr. Kristol wrote:

These advisers had been, as the New York Times reported, going out of their way to avoid "formulations using the word 'war.'" The great effort that we had all simplemindedly been calling a war was now dubbed by Rumsfeld the "global struggle against violent extremism." And the solution to this struggle was, according to Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking here as Rumsfeld's cat's-paw, "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military."
"Now," Mr. Kristol added, "it is of course true enough that the "war on terror" isn't simply a military struggle. What war is? There is a critical political dimension to the war on terror--which the president, above all, has understood.That's why he has placed such emphasis on promoting liberal democracy. But there is also, to say the least, a critical military dimension to this struggle. And President Bush sensed that this Rumsfeldian change in nomenclature was an attempt to duck responsibility for that critical military dimension."

"The president would have none of it."

If things keep going the way they are in Iraq, and American mothers and fathers get tired of seeing their children dying in a war launched under false pretenses, it may not matter what the war is called. Mr. Bush may get carried along by events beyond his control and declare an end to to the debacle. I don't think the American people will tolerate too many more multiple losses of soldiers from the same battalion in one week.

For more of Mr. Kristol's argument, see "Bush v. Rumsfeld."

Posted by Munir Umrani at August 7, 2005 08:26 AM

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