Frank Rich:Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis

[cal04]

PRESIDENT BUSH came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.

Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.

What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

http://donkeyod.blogspot.com/2006/09/donald-rumsfelds-dance-with-nazis-by.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. His speech writers are noobs....rookies.....ill advised/researched

When reading this speech...He is supposed to know better....

But then, desperation does strange things to the mind...clearly Rummys mind is comp'd...never was on right from the start...

[Oilwellian]

2. Excellent...and right on target

This should be sent to every Democrat in congress. :thumbsup:

[Bozita]

3. another Frank Rich bullseye

[applegrove]

4. Oh My God! The handshakes. That hillarious..I want to cry too.

:rofl: :cry: :rofl: :cry: :rofl: :cry: :rofl: :cry: :rofl: :cry:

[DemonFighterLives]

5. Rumsfeld and GFY cheney the last clingons

to the failed policies of dubco.
War Without End. Amen
:dem:

[malaise]

6. Take that Rummy

The game is over - you and the rest of Bushco are naked and exposed.
Great article Frank Rich.

[leftchick]

7. 'war of the worlds'

Rich is just the best....

<snip>

Next up is the parade of presidential speeches culminating in what The Washington Post describes as “a whirlwind tour of the Sept. 11 attack sites”: All Fascism All the Time. In his opening salvo, delivered on Thursday to the same American Legion convention that cheered Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush worked in the Nazis and Communists and compared battles in Iraq to Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal. He once more interchanged the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center with car bombers in Baghdad, calling them all part of the same epic “ideological struggle of the 21st century.” One more drop in the polls, and he may yet rebrand this mess War of the Worlds.