Thursday, March 23, 2006
JUST WHY WAS HE SO WRONG?
As we all know, the Secretary of Defense raised an issue last weekend in a major newspaper. The other day, I endeavored to offer a modest explanation of why I thought he might have been correct on one major point (on which "experts" had dismissed him). Very straightforward.
I tend to avoid critiquing other bloggers, preferring to keep my gaze on the media. However, when the media steps in to tell me "bloggers are battling" about a particular subject, I just like to know how those opposed are making their case -- in this instance, why Rumsfeld is wrong about his Germany and postwar Nazi revival comment. I certainly don't want to feel I'm missing out!
So thanks to Slate, we are pointed in the general direction of a few historically-inclined/trained bloggers I have not read previously, whom I am told will enlighten me as to why Rumsfeld has a screw loose. First, Hub Blog:
That didn't even touch the Germany and postwar Nazi revival issue raised by Rumsfeld. But that's not that blogger's fault though. (I hate being mislinked, too.) Yet given that Slate in the conclusion to the preceding paragraph gave us a quote of the Rumsfeld Nazis statement:
. . . and that the next Slate paragraph opens as:
. . . and as we all know "pooh-poohing" being an official journalistic term, of course, I the humble reader had every right to expect immediately afterwards a link to a tightly argued explanation from among the best of those Slate introduces on why Rumsfeld's view is incorrect. So here color me unimpressed . . . with Slate.
However, we do eventually get directed towards those who appear to have something directly to say on Rumsfeld's take on postwar Germany minus the Allied occupation troops. Scroll down a bit to Hiram Hover:
Okay. Yet the post then doesn't make any attempt to come to grips with just "why" it is "bad". I guess we are [wink, wink] simply supposed to know.
Next, from another blogger, linked to by Hiram:
And this does look promising:
Great! I ready myself. . .
Yes, I admit that last sentence is a tantalizing almost, and I made a similar assertion; but that in itself is a supporting factual point, not a rebuttal to Rumsfeld's argument. So, after we have "ignored" just about everything else short of the U.S.'s role in Germany's postwar division obviously leading to American responsibility for Katarina Witt and the GDR's perennial Winter Olympic accomplishments, as well as corruption, the central issue still remains untouched. If it was a bad argument Rumsfeld made about Nazis possibly reclaiming power after a premature Allied departure from postwar Germany, is it too much to ask for a few clear reasons just "WHY" it was soooooooooo bad?
UPDATE: I realize that some claim to be most displeased not so much about what would have happened to postwar Germany as they are about Rumsfeld's having even drawn an analogy between abandoning Iraq and abandoning the immediate post-Nazi occupation of Germany. However, it must be borne in mind that he was clearly not just making idle comparisons for the sake of doing so. Rather, he was arguing actively against withdrawal and was evidently attempting to support his viewpoint by citing an example likely to be the most familiar to the widest audience.
Rumsfeld's basic assertion seems to be that if there had been an abandoning of postwar Germany a return of Nazism would have resulted. Similarly in abandoning Iraq prematurely today a terrorist regime will likely (re)seize control, and therefore withdrawing from Iraq precipitously will merely hand the country over to jihadists and Ba'athist remnants before the country had had a chance to settle into a more reasonable governing stance. Given what we see of the actions of the enemy versus the new Iraqi government, it is hard to say that, on that score, Rumsfeld is off base.
But if one does NOT accept that scenario, whether Rumsfeld compared withdrawing from Iraq to withdrawing from postwar Germany, or to the Romans withdrawing from Britain in AD 410 for that matter, Rumsfeld's point must be wrong. However, I admit that I find it entirely plausible for argumentative purposes to place in the same general league two militarist dictatorships which possessed expansionist ambitions, each run by a supreme leader who surrounded himself with a cult of personality, both ruling a one-party state in which political opponents were slaughtered, and both of which came to their ends as a result of international, nation-state alliances that fought to crush those respective regimes, with those alliances occupying both countries afterwards to oversee a creation of new political orders. (In Germany's case, of course democratic only in West Germany.)
Well, that is I find it eminently more reasonable than do many of those who seem the most put out by that Rumsfeld comparison. Many of those appear to be on the "anti-war left". That is a left that also includes quite a few who curiously have little trouble with comparisons of U.S. soldiers to Nazis and a U.S. president's actions and words directly to those of Adolf Hitler. ¶ by Robert, Thursday, March 23, 2006
As we all know, the Secretary of Defense raised an issue last weekend in a major newspaper. The other day, I endeavored to offer a modest explanation of why I thought he might have been correct on one major point (on which "experts" had dismissed him). Very straightforward.
I tend to avoid critiquing other bloggers, preferring to keep my gaze on the media. However, when the media steps in to tell me "bloggers are battling" about a particular subject, I just like to know how those opposed are making their case -- in this instance, why Rumsfeld is wrong about his Germany and postwar Nazi revival comment. I certainly don't want to feel I'm missing out!
So thanks to Slate, we are pointed in the general direction of a few historically-inclined/trained bloggers I have not read previously, whom I am told will enlighten me as to why Rumsfeld has a screw loose. First, Hub Blog:
...History really is a bigger picture. So today he comes across as a full-fledged democratic nation builder arguing against early withdrawal -- when only three years ago he was undermining attempts to plan for post-invastion democratic nation building and pushing for an early withdrawal. That's the bigger picture of Rumsfeld...
That didn't even touch the Germany and postwar Nazi revival issue raised by Rumsfeld. But that's not that blogger's fault though. (I hate being mislinked, too.) Yet given that Slate in the conclusion to the preceding paragraph gave us a quote of the Rumsfeld Nazis statement:
..."Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," Rumsfeld wrote. (Disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
. . . and that the next Slate paragraph opens as:
Bloggers opposed to the war are, unsurprisingly, pooh-poohing Rumsfeld's effort...
. . . and as we all know "pooh-poohing" being an official journalistic term, of course, I the humble reader had every right to expect immediately afterwards a link to a tightly argued explanation from among the best of those Slate introduces on why Rumsfeld's view is incorrect. So here color me unimpressed . . . with Slate.
However, we do eventually get directed towards those who appear to have something directly to say on Rumsfeld's take on postwar Germany minus the Allied occupation troops. Scroll down a bit to Hiram Hover:
...Ouch: a bad historical analogy, and to the Nazis to boot...
Okay. Yet the post then doesn't make any attempt to come to grips with just "why" it is "bad". I guess we are [wink, wink] simply supposed to know.
Next, from another blogger, linked to by Hiram:
Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. Further down, Rummy invokes Goodwin’s Law! [Ahistoricality breaks it down nicely]
And this does look promising:
...Ralph Luker, Manan Ahmed and Hiram Hover have all noted this as a bad historical analogy, and I quite agree. But they haven't gone far enough. They haven't actually said why.
Great! I ready myself. . .
Let's start with the Nazis, shall we? I'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that we pretty much did hand postwar Japan back to the people who ran the war against us, leaving the Emperor in place, turning anti-nationalist reform laws into anti-communist purges and turning a blind eye while conservative parties and leaders retook control. I'll let pass the Nazis who we found useful enough to import to the US or allowed to escape to Latin America, etc. I'll even ignore -- in the ironic rhetorical way in which I draw attention to it -- that we allowed East Germany to go straight from Nazi to Soviet control; not happily, of course, but because we clearly didn't have the "will to fight" that war at that point. What did we do with West Germany? We conquered it, purged it, and stayed; not because it was good for Germans but because Germany was now the front line in the Cold War and it was to our benefit to stay and very much to our benefit to protect our weakened allies...
Yes, I admit that last sentence is a tantalizing almost, and I made a similar assertion; but that in itself is a supporting factual point, not a rebuttal to Rumsfeld's argument. So, after we have "ignored" just about everything else short of the U.S.'s role in Germany's postwar division obviously leading to American responsibility for Katarina Witt and the GDR's perennial Winter Olympic accomplishments, as well as corruption, the central issue still remains untouched. If it was a bad argument Rumsfeld made about Nazis possibly reclaiming power after a premature Allied departure from postwar Germany, is it too much to ask for a few clear reasons just "WHY" it was soooooooooo bad?
_____________________________
UPDATE: I realize that some claim to be most displeased not so much about what would have happened to postwar Germany as they are about Rumsfeld's having even drawn an analogy between abandoning Iraq and abandoning the immediate post-Nazi occupation of Germany. However, it must be borne in mind that he was clearly not just making idle comparisons for the sake of doing so. Rather, he was arguing actively against withdrawal and was evidently attempting to support his viewpoint by citing an example likely to be the most familiar to the widest audience.
Rumsfeld's basic assertion seems to be that if there had been an abandoning of postwar Germany a return of Nazism would have resulted. Similarly in abandoning Iraq prematurely today a terrorist regime will likely (re)seize control, and therefore withdrawing from Iraq precipitously will merely hand the country over to jihadists and Ba'athist remnants before the country had had a chance to settle into a more reasonable governing stance. Given what we see of the actions of the enemy versus the new Iraqi government, it is hard to say that, on that score, Rumsfeld is off base.
But if one does NOT accept that scenario, whether Rumsfeld compared withdrawing from Iraq to withdrawing from postwar Germany, or to the Romans withdrawing from Britain in AD 410 for that matter, Rumsfeld's point must be wrong. However, I admit that I find it entirely plausible for argumentative purposes to place in the same general league two militarist dictatorships which possessed expansionist ambitions, each run by a supreme leader who surrounded himself with a cult of personality, both ruling a one-party state in which political opponents were slaughtered, and both of which came to their ends as a result of international, nation-state alliances that fought to crush those respective regimes, with those alliances occupying both countries afterwards to oversee a creation of new political orders. (In Germany's case, of course democratic only in West Germany.)
Well, that is I find it eminently more reasonable than do many of those who seem the most put out by that Rumsfeld comparison. Many of those appear to be on the "anti-war left". That is a left that also includes quite a few who curiously have little trouble with comparisons of U.S. soldiers to Nazis and a U.S. president's actions and words directly to those of Adolf Hitler. ¶ by Robert, Thursday, March 23, 2006
