Arrogance
    By Pierre Haski
    Lib ration

    Monday 17 April 2006

    Donald Rumsfeld has every quality to give offense. Better than anyone else, the American Defense Secretary incarnates all the Bush administration's blind alleys and stalemates. Moreover, by his arrogance, he spontaneously arouses hostility - abroad as well as domestically within the United States, even in Republican ranks and in spite of the sympathy he had acquired during the September 11 attack on the Pentagon. His paw prints are all over everything that's gone wrong with the war in Iraq: in the congenital lying that characterized the triggering of hostilities, in the major strategic errors like the dissolution of the Iraqi Army after the seizure of Baghdad, in the absence of a credible post-war plan, in the humiliations and tortures at Abu Ghraib ... And his colleague Condoleezza Rice was undoubtedly thinking of him when she evoked the "thousands of tactical errors" in their intervention in Iraq. In such a context, the uprising of ex-generals against the Pentagon boss is only remarkable by its absence of precedent and by the movement of panic within the administration that it provokes. But although Donald Rumsfeld's freight of personal responsibility is heavy, he mustn't become the scapegoat for a mucked-up administration, which could happen if the dirty war in Iraq were to compromise Republican prospects in the November mid-term elections. While experts debate whether Iraq is already engaged in a civil war or is merely on the point of plunging into one, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, George Bush, runs the risk of having no choice but to offer Rumsfeld as fodder for disenchanted voters.