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Victory Will Come as in Cold
War, Rumsfeld Predicts
ELI LAKE
NY Sun
Tuesday November 20, 2007
WASHINGTON — President Bush's first secretary of defense,
Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq, says the military alone cannot win the war against global
jihad.
In a phone interview on Saturday with The New York Sun, Mr. Rumsfeld
said the current war is similar to the Cold War, and that America's
victory depends on assisting moderate Muslims against extremists
and on reforming the domestic and international institutions forged
after World War II.
"The concept of victory in this struggle will not be a signing
ceremony aboard a ship like the USS Missouri. It will be much
more like the Cold War, where, over time, the struggle that is
taking place between violent extremists who want to impose their
will on the rest of the world, re-establish a caliphate, and require
others to live lives that fit their idea of how lives ought to
be lived ... that they lose and the moderates who do not want
to impose their will on other people, the people who do not want
to murder people, cutting off their heads and blowing people up,
that struggle will result in the extremists being reduced in numbers
and opportunity and support and the people who oppose extremists
growing in numbers and being successful in defeating them,"
he said.
(Article continues below)
Shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, Mr. Rumsfeld
described victory as a moment when Americans feel safe. Throughout
the Bush administration, the concept of victory has evolved from
rolling up networks for Al Qaeda and other terrorists and depriving
them of safe havens to the outcome in a battle within Islam between
those Muslims who seek war with the West and those who don't.
When asked to elaborate Saturday, Mr. Rumsfeld said America's
task primarily was "to help those people opposing the extremists,
to put pressure on the extremists." But he made sure to say,
"The idea that you can ignore these enemies or live and let
live or find some accommodation of peaceful existence or detente
is just erroneous, it can't be done."
Some of these thoughts have been sketched out in internal memos
from Mr. Rumsfeld made public last month by the Washington Post.
Since resigning from the Bush administration following the Democratic
takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006, Mr. Rumsfeld
has kept a low profile. In recent books about the Bush administration,
he is portrayed as a stubborn cold warrior and hardliner. Among
Democrats he has come under special criticism for approving the
first round of interrogation procedures for terrorist detainees,
procedures that have since been modified. A group of former generals
in 2006 began calling for his resignation on the grounds that
the war in Iraq was breaking the Army. Even some voices on the
right, from outlets like the Weekly Standard, have called for
his resignation out of frustration that he sent too few troops
to Iraq.
Full
article here.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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