Rush/Rumsfeld Interview
Great conversation today between Rush Limbaugh and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld is an outstanding leader and person. The liberals hate him because he's not a sensitive, mushy-headed mealy-mouthed wimp. He's a LEADER. Read the transcript, it's a good one.
JASmius adds: As I observed last week, it's simply Rummy's turn in the flogging rotation, that's all. And as was eminently predictable, the President reiterated his support for the SecDef, which was good politics since Rummy, for all the Left's attempts to trash him, is more popular with the public at large than Bush is.
Indeed, the usual boomerang effect has already begun. Thomas Lipscomb asks today why these half-dozen retired generals (Major-General John Batiste, Major-General John Riggs, General Anthony Zinni, Major-General Charles Swannack, Major-General Paul Eaton, and Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold) didn't resign in protest of Rumsfeld's institutional reforms and Bush foreign policy back when they were still in uniform if they thought both were so misguided (which Zinni didn't, at least back when Bill Clinton was still Adulterer-in-Chief). The Wall Street Journal points out that these half-dozen retired generals are, after all, only a half-dozen, and don't remotely represent the views of the other seven thousand retired generals and admirals, to say nothing of the 1.4 million men and women in uniform. The Extreme Media's attempt to pass them off as such is drawing quite a bit of its own heat. And, as you might have expected, Zinni & Co. were all Clinton appointees and are all in cahoots to draft every establishmentarian's favorite presidential wannabe, Colin Powell, to run in 2008.
The unforgivable sin of a man (or woman) in Big Dog's position - being an agent of change in a hide-bound institution (like the Pentagon) maximally and stubbornly resistent to it - is to be even more stubborn, have the stroke to make the changes stick, and in the end be proven right. And while Rummy continues to take the PR arrows, those hurling them have shown themselves to be without honor or the courage of the convictions to which they so conveniently lay claim, when there's no cost and only profit in doing so.
Civilian control of the military never looked so good.
UPDATE 4/18: Wow, Tony Blankely is calling this "something in the nature of a mutinous sedition" in the same league as the military coup depicted in Seven Days In May - except that this one is left-wing in nature instead of right-wing.
You'd have thought that if something like this were ever going to happen, it would have during the Clinton years when the military was under full-scale comm-symp assault from all sides (women in combat, gender integration, homosexual amnesty, wholesale and reckless defense spending cuts, multiple misguided deployments where no national security interest was at stake). But it didn't, did it?
Can you imagine the tenor of the press coverage of half a dozen retired generals doing to Sick Willie and Les Aspin (or Bill Perry or Bill Cohen) what the Zinni gang is trying to do to Bush and Rumsfeld?
JASmius adds: As I observed last week, it's simply Rummy's turn in the flogging rotation, that's all. And as was eminently predictable, the President reiterated his support for the SecDef, which was good politics since Rummy, for all the Left's attempts to trash him, is more popular with the public at large than Bush is.
Indeed, the usual boomerang effect has already begun. Thomas Lipscomb asks today why these half-dozen retired generals (Major-General John Batiste, Major-General John Riggs, General Anthony Zinni, Major-General Charles Swannack, Major-General Paul Eaton, and Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold) didn't resign in protest of Rumsfeld's institutional reforms and Bush foreign policy back when they were still in uniform if they thought both were so misguided (which Zinni didn't, at least back when Bill Clinton was still Adulterer-in-Chief). The Wall Street Journal points out that these half-dozen retired generals are, after all, only a half-dozen, and don't remotely represent the views of the other seven thousand retired generals and admirals, to say nothing of the 1.4 million men and women in uniform. The Extreme Media's attempt to pass them off as such is drawing quite a bit of its own heat. And, as you might have expected, Zinni & Co. were all Clinton appointees and are all in cahoots to draft every establishmentarian's favorite presidential wannabe, Colin Powell, to run in 2008.
The unforgivable sin of a man (or woman) in Big Dog's position - being an agent of change in a hide-bound institution (like the Pentagon) maximally and stubbornly resistent to it - is to be even more stubborn, have the stroke to make the changes stick, and in the end be proven right. And while Rummy continues to take the PR arrows, those hurling them have shown themselves to be without honor or the courage of the convictions to which they so conveniently lay claim, when there's no cost and only profit in doing so.
Civilian control of the military never looked so good.
UPDATE 4/18: Wow, Tony Blankely is calling this "something in the nature of a mutinous sedition" in the same league as the military coup depicted in Seven Days In May - except that this one is left-wing in nature instead of right-wing.
You'd have thought that if something like this were ever going to happen, it would have during the Clinton years when the military was under full-scale comm-symp assault from all sides (women in combat, gender integration, homosexual amnesty, wholesale and reckless defense spending cuts, multiple misguided deployments where no national security interest was at stake). But it didn't, did it?
Can you imagine the tenor of the press coverage of half a dozen retired generals doing to Sick Willie and Les Aspin (or Bill Perry or Bill Cohen) what the Zinni gang is trying to do to Bush and Rumsfeld?
posted by Jennifer at 3:28 PM
<<< Home