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"It is apparent that many have still not learned history’s lessons."

By AcademicElephant Posted in War — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The next two speeches in the series I've been discussing were given by Secretary Rumsfeld last night at the VFW and this morning at the American Legion Convention in Salt Lake City. The speeches were very different, but there was some common ground as the Secretary used both of them to discuss the communications front of the Global War on Terror. As Mr. Rumsfeld said in his town hall meeting at Fallon Naval Air Station yesterday, concerns over the enemy's ability to manipulate the media is "the thing that keeps me up at night." That means he's taking this pretty seriously, because in general Mr. Rumsfeld claims to sleep like a baby; the last time he admitted to being troubled was in his 2001 confirmation hearings. When asked what one thing kept him up at night, he responded "intelligence." We all have seen graphic evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld was right to worry about that monster under his bed in the form of the systemic intelligence failures ranging from 9/11 to the lead-in to the Iraq war. So while there are those who may scoff at his concern over communications now, I think we might do well to listen to him.

Read on . . .

But for starters, the introduction to Mr. Rumsfeld's first speech to the VFW was deeply moving, and I think it merits quoting at length:

As you know, when returning troops touch down for the first time on American soil, they invariably find -- at any hour of the day or night -- volunteers from the VFW on hand to greet them.

One Sergeant returning from Iraq recalled that when he walked off his plane in Bangor, Maine, at 3 o'clock in the morning, he saw a group of VFW volunteers lined up to shake his hand. He said:

"As I made my way through the line, each man thanking me for my service, I choked back tears. . . . We soon learned that this VFW group had not only waited for more than a day in the airport for our arrival, but that they were doing so for all returning soldiers. When the time came to fly home to Colorado, we were asked by our commander if we would like to join the VFW. Every hand in the unit went up eagerly."

Thank goodness for those brave troops. And thank the good Lord that Americans like you are there to greet them.

Such service has deep roots in our nation. A few years ago, a book was written about a group of people in North Platte, Nebraska during World War II. It seems that trains transporting young GIs to battlefields in Europe and the Pacific would stop at that town. And the townspeople would gather to greet them, wish them well, and to tell them how proud their country was of them.

Over time, the people of North Platte would greet a good number of the millions of young Americans going off to war. What a wonderful tribute it was to those in uniform.

And you can draw a straight line from those folks to each of you and the tribute you offer those who follow the flag of our nation into battle. We have seen that flag wave in times of triumph and in times of tragedy -- a symbol of a great nation -- and of a larger cause.

And our troops display that flag proudly on their uniforms. They honor the flag of our fathers. Salute it. Fight for it. And serve it proudly.

It is the honor of my life to serve with these men and women. And it is an honor to serve a President, who not only respects our flag, but is determined to protect it.

Mr. Rumsfeld went on to address the "Iraq is Vietnam" meme that has been so popular with those who would like to portray Iraq as a foregone failure. First, he pointed to the contribution of those who fought in Vietnam, and then suggested that we need to learn from this conflict as well as from previous skirmishes in the GWoT:

Here is another war that was fought by many of you -- including your VFW Commander, Jim Mueller -- that also deserves mention. Those who served in Vietnam took part in an important battle against Communist aggression. Thank heaven the nation and history increasingly appreciates their important contributions. And that today they stand proudly with every other generation of Americans.

Surely by now we have learned the lesson that when our country gives our troops a mission, they should have the resources and support to finish the job. And surely, we have learned the dangers of giving the enemy the false impression that Americans cannot stomach a tough fight.

It was after U.S. forces left Somalia in 1994 that Osama bin Laden concluded that American forces were "paper tigers." There are stories that Saddam Hussein gave copies of "Black Hawk Down" -- the film about U.S. difficulties in Somalia -- to his commanders as an example of American weakness and faintheartedness.

Today, there is debate in our country about the wars being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the larger and longer struggle against extremists around the globe. Debate can be healthy.

But we should also know that the enemies have media committees, and time their attacks, pick their targets, hide among civilians -- precisely to distort that debate, to manipulate the media, hoping they will focus on the violence terrorists create, not the progress being made against them.

The Secretary reprised this theme in his speech to the American Legion this morning, which was less lyrical in its rhetoric, but more specific in its argument. Mr. Rumsfeld likened, as several others have recently, what is happening now to the period between the First and Second World Wars:

Indeed, 1919 was the beginning of a period where, over time, a very different set of views would come to dominate discourse and thinking in the west.

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be appeased, then the carnage and destruction of then-recent memory of World War I might be avoided. It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among the western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis -- the rise of fascism and Nazism -- were ridiculed and ignored.

Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated -- or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace -- even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear.

It was, as Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

There was a strange innocence in views of the world. Someone [Charles Krauthammer] recently recalled one U.S. Senator's [William Edgar Borah] reaction in September 1939, upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed:

"Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

Think of that!

Of course, while liberal and conservative alike gasp in retrospective horror at the thought of trying to curb Adolf Hitler with words, there are far too many innocents who would try to combat the challenges we face today with "talk." And that is Mr. Rumsfeld's concern. That although this "serious, lethal, and relentless" enemy has killed thousands of civilians and as recently as two weeks ago was plotting to murder more, many have been persuaded that we, the United States, are the root of the problem. As Mr. Rumsfeld said, "we live in a strange time":

-When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who was punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;
-When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army";
-When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq; and
-It is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare, as "the gulag of our times."

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths, and lies, and distortions being told about our troops and our country.

I am glad to see Mr. Rumsfeld naming names here as he identifies the perfidy of news outlets such as Newsweek and CNN, as well as of organizations such as Amnesty International. And it is all very fine and well for him to call for "those who know the truth" to "speak out," but there's only so much we can do. He needs to go on as he began yesterday and today, and, hopefully to focus the public on the peril of this situation. For as the Secretary pointed out, the recent conflict in Lebanon provided testimony to the effectiveness of the enemy in this arena:

And that is important in this "long war," where any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.

Our enemy knows this well. They frequently invoke the names of Beirut and Somalia -- places they see as examples of American retreat and weakness. And as we have seen most recently -- indeed, this month -- in Lebanon, they design attacks and manipulate the media to try to demoralize public opinion. They doctor photographs of casualties, use civilians as human shields and then provoke an outcry when civilians are accidentally killed in their midst.

As with my comments on Mr. Cheney's speech, this is just a summary of Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks and I recommend reading both speeches in full. The Secretary has said he wasn't appointed to communicate, and hasn't been as focused on this issue as he should be, but that seems to have changed. His role as the spokesman for the military may well become his most important public function as the media emerges as the central front of the GWoT.

Based on his performance yesterday and today, he is, once again, the right man for this job.