Who dismissed Rumsfield?

soz

It's Mark Shields (a fellow I like a lot). I saw this discussion too.

The extrication point is interesting, and complex. Who wishes it and why?

The neoconservative contingent does NOT wish it, their preference being for deeper and broader engagement in the region (which may well reflect their ties to Israel as much as any Straussian or manifest destiny ideology). That crowd has been deeply influential in the VP's office. And remember the recent revelation that Kissinger has had his fingers in the pie arguing that "success can be the only exit strategy". I'm not up on Kissinger's writings, so don't understand his motivations or rationale, so don't know what the hell he means by "success".

I'm sure the Pentagon wants out. I'm sure that the Bush 1 crowd want out. I'm sure that the RNC strategy people want out. And I think that each of these groups see it as essential that getting out is done, or marketed, so as to avoid what they would see as the military/national emasculation that happened (in their minds) post viet nam. An exit with pride and grace or some such. This emasculation meme is deeply imbedded (we see it here on a2k regularly from the 'I love the military' crowd re viet nam, re John Kerry, re Iraq, re "the media", etc).

Less visible to me, but perhaps equally powerful or influential, are the structural dynamics related to oil and to lobbyists (many ex Pentagon or ex Congress/Senate) in the employ of Halliburton, Boeing, Northrup and all the other huge corporations who have serious financial interests which don't push towards peace or non-involvement in the middle east. Jimmy Carter has been seeking some clear promise or policy that the US isn't planning to maintain permanent military bases in Iraq (there are a bunch of them and they are big and have a very permanent look) but he hasn't been able to get any such promise. There's some sense in this, of course. It's not hard to imagine the Saud regime falling and thus a pretty serious threat to oil and the world economy if SA and Iraq both fall outside of US/Western control.

As a sort of asterisk here, there's the Christian-warrior-armageddon-fruitcake presence in the military (General Boykin types) but I think they aren't at all significant, particularly now.

A final, periipherally related and depressing thought... someone in the Israeli government has recently thrown out the notion of Israel launching an attack on Iran (and Olmert has just moved to strengthen his political position by bringing in a nutjob radical). Given the diminishment of power of the neocon crowd in the WH and in the US (along with the real possibility that dems will take the presidential in 2008) it might be perceived by the militarist types in Israel and their neocon allies here that there is only a small window of opportunity to force the US into deeper engagement in the ME, and that an Israeli military move might be the only way to achieve that now.

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Mark Shields, right. I like him a lot too. I also hold him personally responsible for the shift we've been seeing in David Brooks. :-) (I don't watch every night, though it's the news I most enjoy watching, but I remember when Brooks first came on and Shields really scored a lot of points off of him. And the transformation from then to yesterday is startling -- back at the beginning they vociferously disagreed about most everything, yesterday they just disagreed on nuance while apparently agreeing on substance. Hope that doesn't mean Brooks' days are numbered, he's been interesting.)

Found the transcript of the section I was talking about:

Quote:

DAVID BROOKS: I was surprised that it happened then. I mean, as has been reported and as a lot of us had been hearing, people in the White House wanted to get rid of Rumsfeld for a long time, and they didn't in part because they thought this would be an admission that the war was a failure. And that's why they didn't do it before the election, even though it had been in the works for quite a while.

I think that was a mistake, because Rumsfeld wasn't only about the war. Rumsfeld became a values issue for a lot of voters. Voters took a look at Bush -- voters who associated with Bush, they took a look at the guy and they said, "If he doesn't fire Donald Rumsfeld, maybe he's not like me after all."

And so it was -- they were sort of wondering about Bush, the guy, that he wouldn't get rid of somebody who was so clearly responsible for something that went poorly. And so I'm of the school that they should have fired him six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, or really two years ago.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec06/sb_11-10.html

(Bolded part is the "hey!" part.)

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Gus
Actually, it was Barbara Bush who threatened the wrath of hell on her son that finally got his attention. Her mission always has been to protect the family interests. Since W couldn't protect himself, momma had to do it AGAIN for him. Poppy agreed. He never dares to disagree with Barb.

One thing I never understood is how W got to carry the Bush dynasty instead of the smarter one, Jeb? At least Jeb knows how to govern successfully.

Rumsfeld's primary flaw was that his main objective was to reorganize and reshape the military establishment. He tried to run the war to achieve this goal and validate his theories. It didn't meet the war's needs and it failed.

BBB

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Re: Gus

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

One thing I never understood is how W got to carry the Bush dynasty instead of the smarter one, Jeb? At least Jeb knows how to govern successfully.

"Jeb in '08!"

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mark shields and the "two david's" (gergen and brooks) are my favourite commentators on u.s. politics .
as a bystander watching from across "the fence" , i am wondering how the iraq and the whole middle-east (and i include afghanistan)mess can be brought under brought under control , and how a reasonable solution can be found .
the canadian military is now (unofficially) talking about having to stay in afghanistan for at least another ten plus years to give the afghan people a sense of security - and they are adding that the other NATO members will have to increase their troop-strength and aid contributions considerably to achieve stability .
canada's official stand is that canadian troops will leave in early 2009 !

it reminds me just slightly of cyprus . canadian troops where stationed there for over thirty years . senior canadian diplomats were on peace missions year-after-year , but the two sides kept spitting each other in the face .
of course , cyprus was not nearly as bloody as afghanistan , but it was also a country where the various parties simply did not want to give an inch .
hbg

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sozobe wrote:

Mark Shields, right. I like him a lot too. I also hold him personally responsible for the shift we've been seeing in David Brooks. :-) (I don't watch every night, though it's the news I most enjoy watching, but I remember when Brooks first came on and Shields really scored a lot of points off of him. And the transformation from then to yesterday is startling -- back at the beginning they vociferously disagreed about most everything, yesterday they just disagreed on nuance while apparently agreeing on substance. Hope that doesn't mean Brooks' days are numbered, he's been interesting.)

Found the transcript of the section I was talking about:

Quote:
DAVID BROOKS: I was surprised that it happened then. I mean, as has been reported and as a lot of us had been hearing, people in the White House wanted to get rid of Rumsfeld for a long time, and they didn't in part because they thought this would be an admission that the war was a failure. And that's why they didn't do it before the election, even though it had been in the works for quite a while.

I think that was a mistake, because Rumsfeld wasn't only about the war. Rumsfeld became a values issue for a lot of voters. Voters took a look at Bush -- voters who associated with Bush, they took a look at the guy and they said, "If he doesn't fire Donald Rumsfeld, maybe he's not like me after all."

And so it was -- they were sort of wondering about Bush, the guy, that he wouldn't get rid of somebody who was so clearly responsible for something that went poorly. And so I'm of the school that they should have fired him six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, or really two years ago.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec06/sb_11-10.html

(Bolded part is the "hey!" part.)

Yup! That particular characteristic of personality (or marketing presentation) has been perhaps the most predictable aspect of these people. How any of them can speak the word "accountability" without god immediately having them choke on a pretzel is a telling argument against everything Frankapisa says (saw him yesterday with kickykan...jovial couple of fools, those two).

I think we ought not to forget Jim Lehrer and his predecessor McNeil for the laudible tone of debate too. The show wouldn't have brought Brooks on as a regular if he didn't have the capacity for sanity. But I liked him from the beginning (as guest) because even then he displayed resiliency and integrity. And Shields has, I think, helped to moderate him even moreso. He's been quite open in his criticism of his other employer (kristol/murdoch) on many occasions.

Actually, the only period of time (from Guergen Shields through Gigot Shields to now) where I saw the tone on the friday night discussion get ragged was during the approach to Bush's first election and during the recount...at that point, Gigot and Shields seemed not to like each other very much. Gigot was standing in line at the grocery store with me two months ago, if I didn't mention that already. Big guy.

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Re: Gus

Ticomaya wrote:

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
One thing I never understood is how W got to carry the Bush dynasty instead of the smarter one, Jeb? At least Jeb knows how to govern successfully.

"Jeb in '08!"

I would guess that unless a major change occurs between now and 2008 the bush name will be **** in a way the Clinton, Truman or Nixon name never even approached. Difference being that history has been kinder to these men than I believe it will be to bush. I'm pretty sure the best Jeb can hope for is some sort of life long mid level government job ala Ted Kennedy, thanks to his moronic brother.

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Hey, BPB ... how about Shuler? You a fan?

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hamburger wrote:

mark shields and the "two david's" (gergen and brooks) are my favourite commentators on u.s. politics .
as a bystander watching from across "the fence" , i am wondering how the iraq and the whole middle-east (and i include afghanistan)mess can be brought under brought under control , and how a reasonable solution can be found .
the canadian military is now (unofficially) talking about having to stay in afghanistan for at least another ten plus years to give the afghan people a sense of security - and they are adding that the other NATO members will have to increase their troop-strength and aid contributions considerably to achieve stability .
canada's official stand is that canadian troops will leave in early 2009 !

it reminds me just slightly of cyprus . canadian troops where stationed there for over thirty years . senior canadian diplomats were on peace missions year-after-year , but the two sides kept spitting each other in the face .
of course , cyprus was not nearly as bloody as afghanistan , but it was also a country where the various parties simply did not want to give an inch .
hbg

hi HB

Gergen is one of my favorite people in US politics too, quite regardless of party. Gawd! There are people on this board who turn to Coulter or Horowitz or Limbaugh and at the same time ignore Gergen. I consider such folks the intellectual equivalent of punk headbangers..."watch me get even stupider".

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bernie :
i'm glad we don't get limbaugh on our local station .
since we usually listen only to CBC and NPR radio stations , we don't have to put up with those nutcases .
unfortunately , they are around somwhere ; i guess that's the price we have to pay for something (loosely) called democracy . :wink:
hbg

ps i'd say we have enough loose cannons of our own around here

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Ticomaya wrote:

Hey, BPB ... how about Shuler? You a fan?

too early to tell....he's likable, and I have heard him talk... he's plain kind of "just folksy" speaking without crossing the line into moronic illiterate like bush. We'll see how he does.

Tico, I'm sure some democrats will turn out badly. I live in the real world.

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hamburger wrote:

bernie :
i'm glad we don't get limbaugh on our local station .
since we usually listen only to CBC and NPR radio stations , we don't have to put up with those nutcases .
unfortunately , they are around somwhere ; i guess that's the price we have to pay for something (loosely) called democracy . :wink:
hbg

ps i'd say we have enough loose cannons of our own around here

HB
I used to listen to CBC radio often. What a national treasure. Not long before I moved, it was taking big funding hits and there was a sad diminishment.

At the time, I was helping folks renovate their homes and so also had the opportunity to listen to talk radio (canadian variety) at those homes where such were the stations tuned to. It was commonly a very painful and depressing experience. How could it be that so many people (regular listeners calling in) were so poorly read, so poorly informed, so intellectually lazy, and yet so aggressively loud and self-certain?

And how could it be that the radio "personality" at the helm could have gained an audience in the first place? They'd have a schtick - some small set of pet issues and some variant of "You're and idiot!" or "Right on, Phil. A few more people like you and the Masons would be exposed!" in their interactions with callers.

These shows are about the hosts. Limbaugh and O'Reilly are paradigm examples. Limbaugh, after the election, said that he felt liberated, that he wouldn't have to carry water any longer for those who hadn't deserved it. The election was about him. Watch O'Reilly with this in mind...everything is made self-referential..."look at me, look at me"

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blatham wrote:

Of course, my analysis will wait for verification and correction from brandon.

Alright. This kind of guessing in the absence of facts is pointless. It's "conspiracy theory" type thinking, imagining you can just "guess" what happened behind the scenes.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

blatham wrote:
Of course, my analysis will wait for verification and correction from brandon.

Alright. This kind of guessing in the absence of facts is pointless. It's "conspiracy theory" type thinking, imagining you can just "guess" what happened behind the scenes.

This response does not bode well for maintenance of your blue-star "Site Analyst - Political Division" position. As my post held in sentence one...

Quote:

Really tough to answer this one. It's the sort of deliberation which happens deep in the WH and even the reporters closest to these matters are susceptible to 'tips' which are actually spin.

But surmise, supported (in those frightfully pedantic few cases where it is) by diverse reading and some historical knowledge and address to statements and facts, etc, is how we go about thinking on and discussing almost everything. You have some ideas why the Bush administration went into Iraq, yet you have what to go on in your surmises?

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blatham wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
blatham wrote:
Of course, my analysis will wait for verification and correction from brandon.

Alright. This kind of guessing in the absence of facts is pointless. It's "conspiracy theory" type thinking, imagining you can just "guess" what happened behind the scenes.

This response does not bode well for maintenance of your blue-star "Site Analyst - Political Division" position. As my post held in sentence one...

Quote:
Really tough to answer this one. It's the sort of deliberation which happens deep in the WH and even the reporters closest to these matters are susceptible to 'tips' which are actually spin.

But surmise, supported (in those frightfully pedantic few cases where it is) by diverse reading and some historical knowledge and address to statements and facts, etc, is how we go about thinking on and discussing almost everything. You have some ideas why the Bush administration went into Iraq, yet you have what to go on in your surmises?

Bush and Cheney's repeated statements over a long period of time as to why we needed to go into Iraq, as well as those of many other people. Furthermore, I found their statements plausible, since they echoed what I had been thinking for years.

Believing the reasons actually given for the invasion of Iraq is a far cry from simply inventing what must have happened behind the scenes of some event. Go ahead and dream up your unsupported, Rube Goldberg-like conspiracy theories, if that's what you need to do.

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Quote:

I found their [Bush's, Cheney's] statements plausible

Oh yes, I know you did. And this epistemological device would have at least a little objective credibility were you now to make a list of those instances where you did NOT find their statements plausible.

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Brandon
Brandon, apparently you don't understand tribal societies any better than the Bush administration did. Their plan was a failure before it started due to their lack of understanding of how tribal societies function. All they had to learn was the history of Afghanistan as a modern example of tribal societies and apply it to most third world countries. In Iraq, the prime example is the conflict between Sunni and Shiia.

Why are we so dumb? Even Alexander The Great learned from his tribal society wars. We didn't learn our lesson in the tribal societies of Vietnam and repeated the same mistakes in the Middle East, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Why are we so dumb? When will the western world learn from history?

BBB

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Re: Brandon

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:

Brandon, apparently you don't understand tribal societies any better than the Bush administration did. Their plan was a failure before it started due to their lack of understanding of how tribal societies function. All they had to learn was the history of Afghanistan as a modern example of tribal societies and apply it to most third world countries. In Iraq, the prime example is the conflict between Sunni and Shiia.

Why are we so dumb? Even Alexander The Great learned from his tribal society wars. We didn't learn our lesson in the tribal societies of Vietnam and repeated the same mistakes in the Middle East, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Why are we so dumb? When will the western world learn from history?

BBB

Irrelevant. Blatham brought up Iraq. I only responded. My original point, which he keeps dancing away from, is simply that he lacks sufficient information, at least without some real research if such is possible on this subject, to come up with a theory of any value concerning what happened behind the scenes in the Rumsfeld resignation. Isn't there even one of you who can carry on a linear conversation on a single question?

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Re: Brandon

Brandon9000 wrote:

BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:
Brandon, apparently you don't understand tribal societies any better than the Bush administration did. Their plan was a failure before it started due to their lack of understanding of how tribal societies function. All they had to learn was the history of Afghanistan as a modern example of tribal societies and apply it to most third world countries. In Iraq, the prime example is the conflict between Sunni and Shiia.

Why are we so dumb? Even Alexander The Great learned from his tribal society wars. We didn't learn our lesson in the tribal societies of Vietnam and repeated the same mistakes in the Middle East, including the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Why are we so dumb? When will the western world learn from history?

BBB

Irrelevant. Blatham brought up Iraq. I only responded. My original point, which he keeps dancing away from, is simply that he lacks sufficient information, at least without some real research if such is possible on this subject, to come up with a theory of any value concerning what happened behind the scenes in the Rumsfeld resignation. Isn't there even one of you who can carry on a linear conversation on a single question?

Aha, from our expert at avoidance.

BBB

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Yet another Meta-argument with Brandon

Cycloptichorn

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Who dismissed Rumsfield?

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