GoldbergBlog

Rumsfeld Returns; Still The Worst

November 8th, 2006 was, at the time, a great day. The Democrats retook both the House and the Senate and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned. For those of you that have blocked out the Rumsfeld years through heavy therapy, allow me to refresh your memory and undo all that hard work: Donald Rumsfeld is like editor of the Weekly Standard William Kristol. They’re both chicken-hawk cheerleaders of the Iraq War and they’re always wrong. Not just on an ideological level. In that, to quote Matt Taibbi, “I wouldn’t trust them to tell me the fucking time.” The only difference is that while Kristol just gets to be wrong and we can all make fun of him, Rumsfeld was actually in a position of power. If he had a conscience, every single American and Iraqi death in this meaningless war would be on it. As it is, he sleeps pretty well at night.

Well now he’s back and he’s got another great idea: a government-sponsored news agency (insert Fox News joke here). The idea is that the government should use the press to help win the hearts and minds of Muslims in the middle east. At first glance (or prima facie to use a term no one outside of college uses), it seems like a good idea. Of course, this is pure Bush-administration dogma: words speak louder than actions. You don’t have to be right or good or anything. What matters is just that you say you are. If anyone wants to say differently, well, that’s just their opinion, no matter how many facts they have to prove their “opinion”. So, if we accidentally bomb an innocent village and happen to kill innocent Muslims who may turn against us, as long as we say that we’re helping them, they’ll believe it! That’s where the agency comes in! Never mind the logistics of how you disseminate that information beyond dropping pamphlets out of airplanes; that will all work itself out, just like the Iraq War did? It didn’t? Well, that’s just your opinion, and since this is America, you’re welcome to it (you America-hater).

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