Rumsfeld, Kurtz: It’s Your Fault, Critics
Those paying close attention will notice that I erred in predicting that Bush would claim during Sunday’s speech that his critics were aiding the terrorists. Apparently that was deemed incompatible with the leader-of-the-free-world stature they were trying to convey. But Bush’s people couldn’t resist making the point anyway; they just had Donald Rumsfeld do it the next day.
Josh Micah Marshall has a nice write-up at Talking Points Memo that looks at Rumsfeld’s statement, as well as a piece by Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online that makes much the same case: Another postcard from the ‘responsibility era’.
Basically, say Rumsfeld and Kurtz, the president’s policies are fine. The problem is all those people who keep criticizing him. Rumsfeld doesn’t complete the thought out loud, but the obvious conclusion of his argument is that the US would be much better off if such criticism were not allowed.
Ironic, isn’t it? According to Rumsfeld and Kurtz, the only way we will be able to create a free, democratic society in Iraq is if we first replace the system of freedom and democracy we have in this country with something that looks a lot more like… dictatorship.
