The Mideastization of the US, or: Rumsfeld Must Resign (Juan Cole)

[enough]

http://www.juancole.com/2004_05_01_juancole_archive.html#108391209066023587
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The Bush administration keeps talking about bringing democracy to the Middle East, but a key element in democracy is always the accountability of public officials to the public. That is why we have elections, that is why we have a division of powers, that is why Congress can impeach the executive and the Supreme Court could order Nixon to hand over his tape recordings. When high officials commit improprieties, they must resign. When they run a loose ship and it founders on the shoals of scandal, they must resign.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz must resign. It is the only way the United States can recover even a shred of credibility in the wider world, at a time when this country desperately needs the esteem and the cooperation of allies and friends. Not only would their resignations begin to restore credibility to the United States, it would be an important step toward resolving the Iraqi crisis. The Bush administration has been paralyzed in going forward in Iraq by Rumsfeld's foot-dragging on Iraq. He insists on trying to run the place himself. Putting a private army of unaccountable commandos in there was his idea. Empowering corrupt expatriates like Ahmad Chalabi was his idea. Using disproportionate force and disregarding civilian casualties were his ideas. Trying to keep Defense Department control of the $18 billion in reconstruction aid was his idea. Most of the ways in which Iraq as an enterprise has gone badly wrong are the result of his ideas. Removing him will allow the State Department to do its job in Iraq starting July 1, without continued disastrous maneuvering from Rumsfeld.

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It is clear where the buck stops with regard to torture by the US military. It stops with the Secretary of Defense (and with the President, but he in any case is facing accountability in November). Moreover, Rumsfeld is not an innocent bystander in all this. His policies have consistently aimed at creating spaces for prisoners to be outside any judicial jurisdiction, so that anything can be done to them with impunity. I remember seeing a news conference where a British journalist complained about the US practice of hooding prisoners as a form of torture. Rumsfeld absolutely ridiculed her. "Hooding?" He asked sarcastically. The torture of POWs at Abu Ghuraib was not carried out by a handful of rogue MPs. It was the result of ordinary practices of US military intelligence, practices that just haven't usually been photographed. Rumsfeld set the tone in which military intelligence felt justified in behaving this way.

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You really wonder whether the Bush plan to Americanize the Middle East isn't being turned on its head. We now have an unaccountable government not elected in accordance with the will of the majority of Americans, which victimizes critics like Joe Wilson and engages in torture. Bush and Co. are emulating the worst aspects of the military governments of Egypt and Yemen. They have no credibility to push the latter toward democracy.

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[Lizzie Borden]

1. re:Rumsfeld

Extremely well said.

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. Lord Rumsfeld of the Flies

"We now have an unaccountable government not elected in accordance with the will of the majority of Americans, which victimizes critics like Joe Wilson and engages in torture."