History Forum / General / British History / August 2006

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, is the leader of the Democrats in
the Senate.

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Does Reid Favor Appeasement?

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid yesterday lashed out at Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld:

 Secretary Rumsfeld's reckless comments show why America is not as safe as
it can or should be five years after 9/11. The Bush White House is more
interested in lashing out at its political enemies and distracting from its
failures than it is in winning the War on Terror and in bringing an end to
the war in Iraq.

 If there's one person who has failed to learn the lessons of history it's
Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld ignored military experts when he rushed to war
without enough troops, without sufficient body armor, and without a plan to
succeed. Under this Administration's watch, terror attacks have increased,
Iraq has fallen into civil war, and our military has been stretched thin.

 We have a choice to make today. Do we trust Secretary Rumsfeld to make the
right decisions to keep us safe after he has been so consistently wrong
since the start of the Iraq War? Or, do we change course in Iraq and put in
place new leadership that will put the safety of the American people ahead
of partisan games? For the sake of the safety of this country, it is time to
make a change.

The obvious point to make is that Reid is being partisan too, but it turns
out that isn't quite right. If you look at Rumsfeld's speech, it turns out
that the secretary isn't being partisan at all:

 In the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist
threat was exaggerated--or that it was someone else's problem. Some nations
tried to negotiate a separate peace--even as the enemy made its deadly
ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a
crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

 There was a strange innocence in views of the world. Someone recently
recalled one U.S. Senator's reaction in September 1939, upon hearing that
Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II. He exclaimed: "Lord, if
only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided."

 Think of that!

 I recount this history because once again we face the same kind of
challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of
fascism. Today, another enemy--a different kind of enemy--has also made
clear its intentions--in places like New York, Washington, D.C., Bali,
London, Madrid, and Moscow. But it is apparent that many have still not
learned history's lessons.

 We need to face the following questions:

   a.. With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly
afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?

   b.. Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a
separate peace with terrorists?

   c.. Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today
are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different
threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?

   d.. And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that
America--not the enemy--is the real source of the world's trouble?
 These are central questions of our time. And we must face them. . . .

 But this is still--even in 2006--not well recognized or fully understood.
It seems that in some quarters there is more of a focus on dividing our
country, than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

 We find ourselves in a strange time:

   a.. When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up 10
times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who were
punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray
Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on
Terror;

   b.. When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave
volunteers in our Armed Forces as a "mercenary army";

   c.. When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of
deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief
admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in power
so CNN could stay in Iraq[*]; and

   d.. It is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the
military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed
to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized
detention facility in the history of warfare, as "the gulag of our times."

 Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths,
and distortions being told about our troops and about our country.

 The struggle we are in is too important--the consequences too severe--to
have the luxury of returning to the old mentality of "Blame America First."

Rumsfeld says nothing about the administration's "political enemies." He
does not mention the Democrats, and the only American politician to whom he
so much as alludes is a long-dead Republican, Sen. William Borah. He does
criticize the media (specifically Newsweek and CNN) and Amnesty
International for anti-American calumnies, and he takes vigorous issue with
the mindset that, as he puts it, "somehow vicious extremists can be
appeased."

Tellingly, Reid raises no objections to the substance of Rumsfeld's speech.

It may be that he agrees with everything the secretary says and is merely
playing politics with terrorism. That is the charitable interpretation of
his comments.

The uncharitable one is that the man who hopes to lead a legislative
majority actually disagrees with what Rumsfeld says -- in other words, that
Harry Reid believes terrorists can be appeased.

* Note: Rumsfeld errs in attributing this admission to "the former CNN
Baghdad bureau chief"; in fact, it was Eason Jordan, then CNN's chief news
executive, as we noted in April 2003.

Jane Arraf, CNN's former Baghdad bureau chief, has told us emphatically that
she was not a party to Jordan's suppression of news.
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