April 13, 2003

• War News

  
  

  My last blog was about looting in Iraq and the Defense Secretary’s callous response.  Rumsfeld was on Meet the Press this morning.  A most notable feature of his responses in that interview was the number of different ways he found to state or imply the idea, “That’s not my job.”

  
  

  He is correct, of course, that his job is to oversee the defense of this country.  I can’t dispute any of the factual things he talked about, because there’s too much I don’t know.  I can, however, take issue with the way he seems to flop around from one stance to another.  It reflects a lack of integrity somewhere, either in the man’s convictions or in the accuracy of the media where I’ve been getting the conflicting reports.

  
  

  Sometimes I get frustrated with the naive questions asked by various interviewers.  Why they waste our time and that of the bigwigs they quiz, with stupid questions that will be answered, “I don’t know.” or “That’s not my department,” I’ll never be able to understand.  Some of it could be a pose, an attempt to put themselves in the place of a stupid, naive viewership, asking the same dumb questions one might hear from the man in the street.

  
  

  If that’s what Tim Russert was up to when he went all wide-eyed and innocent while asking why Iraquis would loot their own museums and hospitals, he’s a consummate actor.  I was convinced that the man was as baffled as he seemed.

  
  

  I have to give Rumsfeld some credit.  He didn’t laugh at the question.  He actually made some attempt to answer it, despite that handicapping lack of insight (or intelligence, as one other Xangan suggested) I noted in the previous blog.  Of course he tried to spin it the administration’s way, and he really didn’t address motivations or reasons, but he gave it a shot.

  
  

  I wasn’t thrilled with either the interviewer or interviewee in that session, but Rumsfeld managed to come off sounding pretty good compared to the Syrian propaganda man who followed him.  It’s beginning to look like Congress might want our forces to move on Syria next.  If that nation’s government is accurately represented by the supercilious, vacuous, condescending PR flack who was on Meet the Press today, I can see the lawmakers’ point.

  
  

  And then there’s Russia.  Throughout my youth, they were our primary enemy.  Then the Cold War and their unwise actions in Afghanistan stretched the USSR to the breaking point.  Could anyone be shocked that they would sell weapons to our enemies, in the desperate straits their economy has reached? 

  
  

  Our military forces get their morale lifted and their sweet tooth satisfied by care packages from home.  In the Russian Navy, sailors have been depending on such things to stave off starvation.  Of course their government is going to deal with anyone who offers money.  Who better than the enemy of their old longtime enemy? 

  
  

  Some people are going to say that’s wrong.  I’m not making moralistic judgments.  I just say it’s understandable.  Our own country’s arms manufacturers have sold weapons to people who later used them against us.  Their profit motive is understandable, too, though perhaps less understandable to me than the economic NEED so apparent in Russia.

  
  

  I have a hard time seeing the “trees”, the separate, distinct conflicts and interactions, because I keep seeing the “forest” of global issues.  I see a planet in big trouble.   I’d like to see some minimization of the parochial conflicts and more attention paid to universal human needs.  I’d be a lot more comfortable with cooler heads in command.

  • 12:50 pm
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