Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld has had a bad last few weeks. It started with the cavalier 'You go [to war] with the army you have' comment, continued with machine signings of condolence letters to the family's of slain GIs and just when you thought he might be turning it around with a Christmas visit to GIs in Iraq, the embattled Rumsfeld shows he still has the dexterity to put both feet in his mouth at once. Or has he simply gone mad? Rumsfeld's latest incredible statement is that 'the Iraqi's [civilians] must defeat the insurgents.' This is after it has become clear that the United States, with by far the most powerful and technologically superior military in the history of the planet couldn't do just that. How exactly does Rumsfeld think that the Iraqi citizenry, fresh off of nearly forty years of being beaten down by a brutal dictatorship, having suffered through nearly two years of a poorly planned invasion and aftermath that is degenerating into a guerilla war, have what it takes to defeat this insurgency?
Or, is this a signal of a shift in policy and PR by the Bush administration? Has the administration finally realized the war is lost and is their exit strategy to blame the failure on the Iraqi people not being up to Democracy? That is the only explanation that begins to make sense out of Rumsfeld's outrageous statement. The Iraqi people have a shortage of energy, an infrastructure that is destroyed, are cash poor, but Rumsfeld says they are the ones who should defeat the insurgents. Rumsfeld went on to warn against the Iraqis becoming 'too dependent on the US Military. More independence is what's needed' he said.
There is no descriptive phrase in the English language adequate for Rumsfeld's statements. For that, one has to go to Yiddish. 'Chutzpah' is the word that comes to mind. Chutzpah, being defined as what someone has to have who who kills his parents and then pleads to the judge for lenience because his is an orphan. The nearest English can come is 'unmitigated gall' but it obviously goes beyond that. We invaded Iraq. We destroyed their military and police along with the rest of their security infrastructure, and now Rumsfeld says that they have to fix an insurgency that is the result of what we have done. What chutzpah indeed.
