Rummy, Wanna Call The Majority Of Americans Names?

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Rummy, Wanna Call The Majority Of Americans Names?
By SusanUnPC
Wednesday, 30 August 2006 at 06:12

You want to call the majority of Americans "appeasers," as you did in your speech yesterday at the American Legion National Convention?

Here are a couple names for you. You’re a jingo. Worse, you’re a fucking loser.

You loser: You’ve lost your precious war in Iraq. You’ve lost the trust of the American people including a great many Republicans (particularly patriotic conservatives). You’ve lost the confidence of other nations around the world.

Worst of all, your "un-appeasing" aggression has not hurt — but grown — jihadist terrorism. Which makes YOU, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, far worse than an "appeaser" since you’ve failed at that which you hungered to fight and disastrously set back our fight against jihadism. Terrorism-practicing sectarian groups have sprung up in Iraq. (When will you, Donald Rumsfeld, fucking get it that the homegrown terrorist factions in Iraq didn’t exist, nor did the Al Qaeda implants, until you invaded the country?) Further, the jihadist psychopaths around the world are using our invasion of Iraq, and our joint partnership with Israel to decimate Lebanon, as recruiting tools. Your loser military policy has become the jihadists’ best PR tool.

Tom Friedman said it the other day on Imus In The Morning on MSNBC. The Neocon Bushites, Friedman said are really good at talking about principle. But they never talk about practice. They won the war in Iraq easily, Friedman acknowledged. But — and Rumsfeld is the most guilty of this — they never planned for "the day after the day after" Saddam fell, Friedman noted.

I often feel desperate about the need to stop the growth of jihadism, so much do I loathe and fear the psychopathic, fatalistic, cruel movement. But even little ol’ me can see that ONE WAY to stop the growth of jihadism is not to supply them with unbeatable recruiting material, from bombing women and children to invading and occupying predominantly Muslim countries.

With the population explosions in Muslim-dominated countries (while European and North American countries can’t maintain their populations), and their population majorities under the age of 30, our children and grandchildren face a potentially catastrophic prospect of a worldwide caliphate. But we don’t address the indicators for the growth of jihadism by convincing Muslims around the world that we are IN DEED the enemy. The jihadists’ intellectual father and martyr, Sayyid Qutb, says:

"The white man in Europe or America is our number-one enemy ... The white man crushes us underfoot while we teach our children about his civilization, his universal principles and objectives ... We are endowing our children with amazement and respect for the master who tramples our honor and enslaves us. Let us instead plant the seeds of hatred, digust and revenge in the souls of these children. Let us teach these children from the time their nails are soft that the white man is the enemy of humanity, and that they should destroy him at the first opportunity." (Transcribed from The Looming Tower, page 23, by Lawrence Wright.)
(Reread Qutb’s statement, and try putting the same words in the mouths of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, substituting "Islamofascist" for "white man.")

We cannot begin to counter the jihadist movement by the sole blunt instrument of military force, as Rummy the Jingo insists. ("Jingo" is defined in my Websters New World Dictionary as "a person who boasts of his patriotism and favors an aggressive, threatening, warlike foreign policy.")

Stopping or at least controlling the jihadist movement is an immensely challenging task. The blunt instrument of military might — as was proven so baldly in Lebanon where the terrorist group Hezbollah has emerged as the "moral" victor — is only one small method to employ.

Before any military action — ever, ever, ever! — is taken in the campaign against jihadism, "blowback" must always be considered carefully. The most obvious example is the war in Iraq, with "blowback" including the fury of Muslims around the world (particularly Shiites whose essential shrines are in Iraq) as well as the sprouting up of horrifically violent Sunni and Shiite insurgents who are blowing up, or torturing to death, innocent Iraqis and U.S. soldiers.

The brilliant series "Deadwood" — surely one of the greatest dramas in the history of television — has, in its third season, depicted the transition of the primary characters, from their accustomed method of addressing threats by slashing the throat of their opponents, to instead using cunning, cleverness, town leader conferences, and even publishing a particularly effective letter in Deadwood’s newspaper.

This ability to transit from violence to using one’s wits is lost not only on the jihadists, but also on the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and their sadism-prone boy king. It is easier for both Rumsfeld and Al-Zawahri to slash a throat or launch a rocket than it is to stop and think, and chance a wits-based strategy. But a progressive move towards outwitting one’s fearsome enemy, rather than a mindless, doomed-to-fail reach for the gun or the knife, is the only salvation not only for Deadwood, but for the United States. From "The tide turns as a camp becomes a town," one of TV critic Matt Stoeller’s superb series of weekly reviews of the Deadwood episodes:

It’s telling that when Al, a volatile man himself, profiled Hearst not as an evil wizard, but a wealthy, sadistic terrorist with a bad back, he devised a counter-strategy that required participants to keep a cool head — even Ellsworth and Bullock, who were so enraged that it’s a wonder their heads didn’t pop.
Al eventually meted out violence himself — beating crucial tactical information out of the Pinkerton shooter, then slashing his throat — but he did it behind closed doors, and his ruthlessness was purged of every emotion but defiance. Then he turned Hearst’s modus operandi — cruelty cloaked in mystery — against him, taunting Hearst on the balcony across the way, telling him the Pinkerton left Al’s place a long time ago and he should have been home by now.

The coup de grace: As a stymied Hearst went inside, Al boomed, in plain hearing of everyone on the street, "How’s your back?" ...

Al Swearengen succeeds in stymying his opponent by using his wits, by lobbing perfectly timed verbal insults and, most clever of all, by beating him at his own game.

The "wealthy, sadistic terrorist," George Hearst, is very much like Donald Rumsfeld:

[Two characters’ conversation] was about adapting to one’s surroundings rather than destroying and remaking them. Americans are not predisposed to celebrate this principle, and mining boss George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), who just hired an army of Pinkerton thugs to break the camp, holds it in contempt.
Hearst [or Rumsfeld] is a not an adapter, he’s an acquirer; when he wants something, he demands it, and when he’s refused, he tries to grab it, and when it can’t be grabbed, he obliterates it, to send a message: "This is what happens when you refuse me." ("Deadwood continues to lurch toward civilization," Matt Zoller Seitz, NJ Star-Ledger)

Like Hearst, Rummy’s and Dick’s modus operandi are to take, attack, and destroy. Rummy and Dick are great at talking about the "principle" but they stink at — worse, they are incapable of — executing the "practice." Rummy and Dick cannot adapt or act with finesse on the world stage. The sole implementations of their "principles" are demanding, grabbing and obliterating.

Donald Rumsfeld has an op-ed in today’s New York Post. It is titled "THE WILL TO WIN." As if will were what it took to win. The subtitle is "DOES THE WEST STILL HAVE IT?," which is nothing but a crass challenge to Americans to show they have "the balls" to win.

I prefer wits to will. It’s just that simple, really.

I pray to god that we make it intact until 2008. Better than prayer, let’s all work to get these crude practitioners of a costly and violent enterprise out of office.

And may we Americans grow up, transiting from violent response to cleverly outwitting and disarming the jihadists, and stop feeding their PR machine. We’ll have to become more civilized and more engaged in the world. But it’ll save our children and grandchildren.