I can't think of anything to say.
I agree with the article, and I don't get why you don't? Arseholes shouldn't become sainted upon their death.
and I don’t get why you don’t?
I hesitate to put words into thols2 mouth, but I think he's being ironic.
As an interesting aside, Paul Bremner, the man the Bush team put in charge of the Iraqi reconstruction; is now a ski instructor...More his level of competence, I think
The only thing of note I can think of that isn't damning is his 'known unknowns....' speech which is actually a reasonable discussion and was roundly mocked at the time.
He's pretty much the ultimate hawkish neoliberal, and look where that's got us.
I think he’s being ironic.
Yes, that was an attempt at irony. Also, I think the article pretty much summed up anything I would want to say about him anyway.
A fitting tribute:
https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-looks-back-at-donald-rumsfeld-and-the-power-o-1847206042
It's a toss up between him and Kissinger as to who has the most blood on their hands.
Both truly awful human beings who seemed to have a casual contempt for the enormous death toll, chaos and destruction their decisions resulted in
I'd say kissinger wins that one, but rumsfeld tried to beat him
His known, knowns etc Was a good speech tho
It still doesn't come close to Hunter S. Thompson's obit for Richard Nixon.
If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/
The only thing of note I can think of that isn’t damning is his ‘known unknowns….’ speech which is actually a reasonable discussion and was roundly mocked at the time.
He’s pretty much the ultimate hawkish neoliberal, and look where that’s got us.
These were my thoughts too
Hunter S Thompson. Magnificently-focused hatred.
Telling people not to speak ill of the dead is a similar device to the one the NRA employs every time there is a school massacre. Now is not the time...yes, it is very much the time, actually.
Perhaps excoriating people like this at the moment of their departure will send a message to others who think their foul legacies can be fudged or sanitised by hiding behind platitudes and tame obituaries.
I think Kissinger is of a generation where a lot of people had blood on their hands though, but his infamy seems to have outlasted the others, I suspect because of his high profile and near celebrity status.
It’s interesting that the article name checks MacNamara - he expressed regret about Vietnam fairly vehemently at the end of his life, but shockingly also said he’d had significant doubts from very near to the start, but still pursued a policy which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese…
I'll just leave this here...
He didn't die though. He just returned home to hell.
I think it's okay to speak ill of the dead if you also spoke ill of them while they were alive (and maybe you're not shouting it with a megaphone at their grieving family).
It’s interesting that the article name checks MacNamara – he expressed regret about Vietnam fairly vehemently at the end of his life, but shockingly also said he’d had significant doubts from very near to the start, but still pursued a policy which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese
@timbog160 - have you watched the Ken Burns Vietnam War series? It's absolutely brilliant and goes into extensive detail about the politics behind it all to put it in context. The military apparently told MacNamara from day one that the war was unwinnable and a huge folly but he went ahead anyway
Edit: I've just had a look and unfortunately it's no longer on iplayer 🙁
Known unknowns wasn't even his idea.
And I'll just leave this here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000kxws/once-upon-a-time-in-iraq
Another brilliant, if thoroughly depressing documentary
As an interesting aside, Paul Bremner, the man the Bush team put in charge of the Iraqi reconstruction; is now a ski instructor…More his level of competence, I think
Ski resorts give free season passes to retired people who will give 5 hours guiding free per week (or something). It's a brilliant way to spend your life - hanging out on a mountain. He hasn't been humbled, he's living the dream.
Have you been listening to the Slow Burn podcast on the invasion of Iraq?
If you've not watched it, then Generation Kill is worth a watch.
It's the dramatisation of the first week of the Iraq war, done as a day-by-day account. The journalist who wrote it, Evan Wright, based it on what he saw when embedded with a marine reconnaissance unit. It's a damning indictment of the total lack of planning, the chaotic disorganisation and the complete incompetence of those in command.
Its no wonder Iraq ended up in the state it did
@binners yes a brilliant series - I actually bought it on Amazon and it’s a great watch. Mind blowing that so much energy and so many lives were wasted on a completely false premise (ie the domino theory). Uncanny parallels with later wars…
Yeah... for all it was a total disaster nobody seemed to have learnt an awful lot, least of all Donald Rumsfeld
Recent American foreign policy is still all about trying to mitigate the damage wrought by Rumsfeld almost twenty years ago. Every thirty years or so there seems to be a colossal strategic mistake made by a major power over Afghanistan, the British, the Soviets and the Americans learned the hard way that conflict there is unwinnable. The invasion of Iraq against the better judgement of the UN precipitated a chain of events that still resonate in Yemen and Syria. This section from the Atlantic is stunningly on the money:
...Rumsfeld was the chief advocate of every disaster in the years after September 11. Wherever the United States government contemplated a wrong turn, Rumsfeld was there first with his hard smile—squinting, mocking the cautious, shoving his country deeper into a hole...
In comparing Rumsfeld with McNamara, it's clear that whatever doubts the former had were kept to himself and taken to the grave. Rumsfeld is up there with Richard Nixon and Kissinger for acting without conscience or regard for collateral damage.
The false premise was always a red herring, Iraq was always about making cash from chaos. He would be better remembered for his speech about "The vase" which became a meme for the looting of a nation.
At the time I remember reading a blog by an Iraqi woman who was an engineer (or she was, like most Women she lost her job to a man when the country was 'liberated'). A bridge near to where she lived had been bombed by the coalition and her brother (also an engineer) submitted a bid for the repair work. He knew what he was doing because his company had repaired the same bridge a decade earlier when it had been bombed during desert storm.
He estimated it would cost about $100,000 to repair the bridge. He was undercut by an American contractor, who submitted a bid of $10 million. One hundred times the actual cost, or 99% graft if you like.
Fortunes were made where lives were lost. It's The great Blood and Oil Swindle and owes more to naked, unfettered personal greed than geopolitical, or even neo-liberal dreams.
The false premise was always a red herring, Iraq was always about making cash from chaos.
No, the advocates for overthrowing Saddam Hussein genuinely believed they were doing a good thing and that the results would vindicate them. They were disastrously wrong and too arrogant to consider any evidence to the contrary, but they really did think they were the good guys. That belief is what made them so dangerous, corrupt people are easy to sway, true believers are impossible.
Of course, anytime there's a war or disaster profiteers will turn up to plunder anything they can, but that wasn't why the invasion happened, it was a result.
The book Generation Kill is at least as good, if not better than the TV series.
According to the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document endorsed by senior Bush administration officials as far back as 1997, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification" for the US "to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security," "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
No, the advocates for overthrowing Saddam Hussein genuinely believed they were doing a good thing and that the results would vindicate them. They were disastrously wrong and too arrogant to consider any evidence to the contrary, but they really did think they were the good guys.
A pattern that is repeated over and over again. I'm reading a history of the Vietnam War at the moment and apparently certain US hawks were advocating for the use of tactical nukes in the mid-50s to defend French colonial interests and (mostly let's be honest) stop the reds from winning. Fortunately they were shouted down but that's quite the what if.
I suppose that you need a certain level of personal belief and strength of will (and perhaps arrogance) to get to the sort of position where you can have that level of influence in any case.
"No, the advocates for overthrowing Saddam Hussein genuinely believed they were doing a good thing and that the results would vindicate them"
That might of been the delusion that Tony Blair succumbed to but it wasn't a case of the profiteers turning up they were allready lined up. In the US it was like the PPE scandal on steroids, billions of dollars were sloshing around for Dick Cheney and friends and donors to the Republican Party to burn through like monkeys with flamethrowers.
Ergo the chaos on the ground described in Gen Kill and once upon a time. There was no plan at all. It might have been dressed up as neo liberalism but it was more neo opportunism.
The Iraq war was also essentially an economic assault on Russia by the US
Saddams oil contracts were all with Russian oil companies, so with the overthrow of the regime those contracts were all null and void, and with the Americans as an occupying force, US Companies simply moved in and took over, depriving the Russians of billions in revenue and resources
Just an added bonus
No, the advocates for overthrowing Saddam Hussein genuinely believed they were doing a good thing
Robin Cook who resigned as Foreign Secretary over the decision to go to war and, had exactly the same access to intelligence as Tony Blair, made it clear in his resignation speech to parliament that Iraq was going to be attacked not because it was a threat to anyone but because it was considered to be weak, especially after years of crippling sanctions.
Attacking Iraq was never about making the world a safer place. And it did indeed make the world more dangerous.
Nor was it because people such as Bush Rumsfeld and Cheney were losing sleep worrying about the lives of Iraqis under Saddam Hussein. When Saddam was gassing and murdering people he was strongly supported by the US who provided him with chemicals and weapons, Rumsfeld was a particularly strong supporter of Saddam Hussein.
What Bush Rumsfeld and Cheney did have in common however, apart from a lack of concern for the Iraqi people, was that they all had heavy involvement in the oil industry, as others in the Bush administration had.
But the primary reason for going to war imo was the Project for a New American Century's goal of full spectrum dominance.
And to help to achieve that war was absolutely necessary. The first target was extremely weak, Afghanistan, but the next target Iraq was also weak. These would bring easy victories and would create a groundswell of demand by the American people for more victories, that is the normal pattern in empire building.
I have no doubt that had it gone according to plan Syria would have been the next target, a bit stronger than the other two but still doable for a hugely powerful country such as the US. Instead of intervention they have had to settle for an endless bloody civil war in Syria.
The ultimate prize would have been Iran. After that I guess most countries would have been expected to comply with whatever the US demanded.
However it all went tits up and the Project for the New American Century was wound up only 6 years into the new century.
The Iraq war was also essentially an economic assault on Russia by the US. Saddams oil contracts were all with Russian oil companies, so with the overthrow of the regime those contracts were all null and void
This isn't true. Before 2003, 30% of oil exports from Iraq were via Russian companies, and two thirds of Iraqi oil ended up in the US. LUKoil also had an oilfield services contract signed with the oil ministry but the true value was wildly exaggerated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/dec/11/usa.iraq
It's such a daft saying. If you don't want to be spoken ill of once you're dead, just don't live the sort of life that earns you exactly that. Or bury it with the good you do. You can't be a war criminal and expect to be remembered as a good guy.
Rumsfeld would deserve everything he gets even if just for his part in creating the US wars... But the way he industrialised the looting doubles it down and the torture is just the icing on the cake. And that's not even close to the limit of the harm he caused over his career. He created Dick Cheney ffs, and played a major behind-the-scenes part in the creation of Reaganomics and Wanniski's batshit cult of supply-side, probably the biggest disaster in modern America, and helped popularise Friedman and the Chicago school so they could go off and ruin economics elsewhere...
Yes, that's the truly impressive thing about Rumsfeld and Cheney - they had their fingerprints on every catastrophe that befell America from the Nixon administration onwards. Rumsfeld mastered how the bureaucracy worked and learned a lot from Nixon's downfall. Donald Trump was a malignant ****, but he never really understood how the bureaucracy worked so he actually achieved little of what he wanted to do. Rumsfeld was the opposite, he knew how to get shit done. Problem is, he really thought that what he was doing was for the best so he ignored any dissenting views. Ironically, a lot of the "Deep State" that Trump railed against was actually the work of Rumsfeld and Cheney - they made sure their policies were embedded into the bureaucracy and would be nearly impossible to reverse.
