Bush V. Rumsfeld?

[NATO AIR]

I think this is another case of Kristol and co. overreacting, but on other matters relating to the effort in Iraq, Rumsfeld has been astonishingly asinine and incompetent. What should this mean for his future as SEC DEF? I don't think he should resign, but if he continues to make these kinds of mistakes future SECDEF's will answer for it with declining power and responsibilities.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/923vgvjf.asp

Bush v. Rumsfeld
From the August 15 / August 22, 2005 issue: The president knows we have to win the war in Iraq . . . Rumsfeld doesn't.
by William Kristol
08/15/2005, Volume 010, Issue 45

LAST WEEK IN THESE PAGES we called attention to the John-Kerry-like attempt of some Bush advisers, led by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to abandon the term "war on terror." 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, 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. This past Monday, announcing John Bolton's recess appointment as U.N. ambassador, the president went out of his way to say that "this post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war." That same day, at a high-level White House meeting, President Bush reportedly commented, with some asperity, that no one had checked with him as to whether he wanted to move beyond the phrase "war on terror." As far as he was concerned, he reminded his staff, we are fighting a war. On Wednesday, speaking in Texas, the president used the word "war" 15 times, and the phrase "war on terror" five. "Make no mistake about it," the president exclaimed, "we are at war. We're at war with an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001. We're at war against an enemy that, since that day, has continued to kill." And on Thursday, in case his advisers hadn't been paying attention, the president said it one more time: "We're at war."
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