The Nov. 13 edition of the weekly Military Times newspapers (4 newsapapers serving each branch of the military) features an editorial titled “Time for Rumsfeld to go”. The editorial condemns Rumsfeld’s refusal to admit what the situation actually is in Iraq, calls his strategy and leadership a failure, ending with the words:
Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:
Donald Rumsfeld must go.
(Click here to read the full editorial.)
Let’s be clear: Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal, and should be driven from office and put on trial for his crimes, along with the rest of the Bush administration. As Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld has:
- Helped orchestrate the invasion of Iraq based on fabricated evidence and blatant lies.
- Gave permission and encouraged the use of torture by the US military at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers (see retired Brig. General Janis Karpinsky’s testimony at the Bush Crimes Commission).
- Approved of the use of white phosphorous chemicals (which burn the skin of Iraqis) and other brutal means of putting down the population of Iraq.
- Been responsible, along with the rest of the administration, for the deaths of nearly 655,000 Iraqi people since the war’s beginning.
The list goes on, but any one of these crimes is horrific in itself. Moreover, the Bush administration has every intention of continuing this disastrous onslaught and spreading it to other countries in the Middle East and around the world. Bush has recently come out publicly stating that Rumsfeld and Cheney will stay on for the rest of his term.
But enforcing the brutal rule of empire is not proving as easy for this regime as it had imagined. That the Military Times, a major voice from inside and to the military, is calling for Rumsfeld to be removed from office is indicative of the growing divisions inside the US military and government as the Iraq war spins out of their control. The editorial speaks to the growing number of retired and now active-duty military commanders speaking out against Rumsfeld’s war strategy, and the emerging civil war that the Bush administration refuses to acknowledge or have an easy solution to (except for more brutal suppression of the Iraqi people).
A situation like this is ripe for powerful resistance from people inside the US to burst through these cracks and drive Rumsfeld and the Bush administration as a whole from office. Moreover, the people in the Middle East who continue to suffer the massacres, bombs, torture, and house-to-house raids demand we do nothing less.