While listening to ABC’s “This Week” this morning on my way to work, I started to hear echoes of Robert McNamara in Donald Rumsfeld. Look at what he said today: “It’s clearly a tragic day for America,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. “In a long, hard war, we’re going to have tragic days. But they’re necessary.” (source). Maureen Dowd wrote a great column on this very subject a few days ago. Her best line, and one oh so apt for Rumsfeld’s quote today: ‘In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”‘
In the early days of the war on Iraq, my husband and I discussed whether we weren’t getting into another Vietnam. As time passes and the shadow war continues, I grow more sure that President Bush and his crew have not learned the lessons of history and have committing our troops to another multi-year battle against an enemy we cannot defeat in a land we do not understand.
I feel both sad and angry that who knows how many of our men and women will have to pay the ultimate price until this mess gets straightened out. I just hope our next president will be able get us out of there quickly and with some faint shreds of our honor intact.