Shame on Donald Rumsfeld

Every one of the young people who dies in Iraq is one too many. Just today, someone told me that the defense of freedom is costly. Hell, yes! It was too costly to send our young people to 'Nam in the name of freedom. And it is too costly to send our young people to Iraq in the name of freedom. The Vietnamese wanted to be free of non-Vietnamese in their presence and the Iraquis want to be free of non-Iraquis in their presence. Neither the Vietnamese nor the Iraquis were/are worth a single U.S. casualty. Robert Strange McNamara apologized for lying 30 years after he caused the death of tens of thousands of better people than he. Donald Rumsfeld is spouting the same nonsense and fine, young U.S. people are in harm's way because of him. The French couldn't defeat the Vietnamese and the British couldn't defeat the Iraquis. We can't even find Saddam Hussein, let alone weapons of mass destruction (the Tonkin Gulf of our time), or Osama bin Laden. Bring 'em on! shouts the President of the United States. This is madness repeated twice in my lifetime. Enough! As Patrick Henry said, If this be treason, make the most of it!

[x Reason]
July 8, 2003

Arabian Naughts

The Pentagon's cartoonish denial of the obvious

Jeff Taylor

At the height of the Vietnam War NBC's Banana Splits kids' show featured fifteen-minute cartoon episodes of the Arabian Knights. The premise was that after the evil sultan Bakaar forced his way into Baghdad and deposed Prince Turhan, Turhan took to the hills and caves outside the capital to fight the forces of Bakaar. To Turhan's acrobatic skills were added the strength of a giant, the spells of a wizard, a shapeshifter, the Princess Nida's gift for disguise, and a donkey that went absolutely ape-shit when you pulled on its tail. As yet, U.S. forces in Iraq have yet to confront any foes so imaginatively armed, but Pentagon descriptions of the fighting are proving almost as fanciful. Were it not for the very real death and pain involved in the subject matter, Pentagon briefings might even rate as entertaining.

The U.S. defense establishment is now in a rhetorical box of its own making. Because Iraq was defined as a country in need of liberation from a brutal dictator—let's pretend weapons of mass destruction were never mentioned— the populace was supposed to embrace U.S. forces as liberators once the dictator was out of the way. A tautology, true, but it actually played out that way for about 72 hours back in April. Today, it is a different story.

The pace, size, and sophistication of attacks on U.S. forces is increasing. Most ominous is the use of mortars by the attackers, which suggests a level of training and direction a step above your basic rabble. You don't point and shoot a mortar. With indirect fire weapons, some degree of range-finding is needed to hit a target. When mortar rounds come whistling out of nowhere and on target, the guys on the receiving end feel helpless, and each round makes quite the impression.

U.S. officials could say, yes, there appear to be elements in Iraq who have entered the field bent on driving us out. But that would contradict the liberator line. As the architects of Iraq campaign did not allow for any dissent from the mission, any dissent is illegitimate and to respond to dissent would only grant it legitimacy.

As a result, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brands elements of the Iraqi resistance "Saddam loyalists" despite evidence that would-be jihadists from other Arab countries were among the most dogged fighters the U.S. encountered in Iraq. In fact, the uniformed military has long recognized the potential for such fighters to throw up a guerilla conflict.

The specter of a guerilla war in a far off land which bleeds U.S. forces bit by bit remains too frightening for Rumsfeld and the Pentagon brass to confront. So they deny it and define it away.

"It's a different time. It's a different era. It's a different place," Rumsfeld is fond of saying when confronted with comparisons between the Iraq occupation and the war in Vietnam. All true and all irrelevant. History does add a wrinkle and repeat itself now and again.

To wit, if you have satellite dish you can catch Arabian Knights on Cartoon Network's Boomerang channel.

Jeff Taylor prefers Jonny Quest and the Fantastic Four in the old cartoon category.

Day One - After Class

I came, I saw, and I conquered. - Julius Caesar. I came, I saw, and I bored 'em out of their skulls. I met HIST 1302-004 at 9:40am in LIB 16. There were 33 diverse (!) names on the first-day roster. 29 students showed up for the FIRST WEEK of class. In a summer term, each class meeting is nigh unto a week. As Muhammad Ali loved to say, I pity the fools! Those 4 are well on the way to roadkill. It is not unknown to me - after 31 years at Amarillo College - that any number of those students will remain on the class roll at the end of the term and receive an unearned F in the course. Sometimes I feel as if I work in a meatpacking plant, just puttin' 'em down, one after the other. After approximately two hours of talking about the course and demonstrating WebCT, I got zero (0), zip, zilch, nada when I asked for questions. I asked a student up front, Do you know the school yell at AC? Of course, I got a blank stare. Then I asked, What is the school yell at Texas A&M? Several answered: Gig 'em! (Whatever the hell that means.) Then, I asked, What's the school yell at UT-Austin? The immediate answer: Hook 'em! Then I said, What's the school yell at Amarillo College? More silence. I said, Here it is! accompanied by a monumental shrug and a What, me worry? expression. Followed by uneasy laughter. It's going to be a looooooong summer term. Stay tuned.

Day One - Before Class

Last year, I encountered an article in American Scholar - the publication of Phi Beta Kappa. No, I am not a member of Phi Beta Kappa, although I knew a member of Phi Beta Kappa (Douglas Clark, University of Denver, 1964). Anyway, the article was published postumously when the widow of Professor Lionel Basney discovered it among her late husband's papers. Basney was a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, at the time of his death at age 57 in 1999. Basney's postumous article was selected as the best article in American Scholar in 2003. Basney's earlier contribution - "Immanuel's Ground" - was selected as best article published in 1999.

Basney's final publication - "Teacher: Eleven Notes" - appeared in the Winter 2002 issue of American Scholar (pp. 75-88). I was particularly taken with Note 5.

The basic equipment for a classroom teacher is the same as for a stand-up commedian: a striking voice, a direct gaze, and the inner freedom to say more or less anything that comes to mind. Also useful is a thick mental deposit of miscellaneous information: anecdotes, publication dates and other historical clutter, phrases from songs, the names and saleable features of recent movie figures all stick involuntarily in my mind and are subject to random, improvisatory recall....

I must go and prepare for class in one hour. I feel as if I am going into the belly of the beast. 31 years and no time off for good behavior....