State of the Nation - Part II

Part II: Leadership - Taking Stock

Malady: moral confusion, whose? MSNBC reported on a speech yesterday by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pointing out another malady the Bush administration now declares is besetting our people, "moral, and perhaps even intellectual confusion" ?! Quoting the story,

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease “a new type of fascism.”
In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral or intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.

Where did this bizarre characterization come from? This concept is certainly not new. And it seems that it was not even an original thought with Rumsfeld. Here is the recent reference:
August 23, 2006
Inside the “Cease-fire”
U.N.’s looming failure reveals West’s moral confusion.
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers

In the long term the West loses, for once more it has allowed the jihadists to manipulate our weaknesses to achieve their aims. One has only to look at Western media coverage of the conflict to see how the moral confusion of many Westerners has left us vulnerable to jihadist fanatical certainty.

Blogger docstrangelove disagrees vehemently - offering an excellent dissection of the Rumsfeld/Bush view on moral confusion, skillfully taking it apart, piece by piece. To quote an exerpt (blogger's links),

There you have it: al Qaeda attacks us and we attack Saddam Hussein. It is the superpower equivalent of a toddler’s temper tantrum.
Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush led us into the war in Iraq with images of mushroom clouds in our cities and flowers at our soldiers’ feet as they liberate Iraq. Either they were intellectually and morally confused when they sold us this quagmire or they were lying. Since the invasion, the Administration’s moral confusion has grown by leaps and bounds. After their initial casus belli of WMD fell apart, the Administration trotted out the "freedom is on the march" argument. To this day they claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do even when the very rationale for the invasion has been so thoroughly discredited.
Mr. Rumsfeld has been morally deficient in his handling of the Iraq invasion. He was
morally obtuse when looting broke out after the invasion due to lack of security (a fundamental moral and legal duty of the occupier); he was morally obtuse when
the abuses took place in Abu Ghraib; he has been morally obtuse as Iraqi civilians are being butchered at alarming rates; he has been morally obtuse while massacres like Haditha and rapes of little girls occur on his watch; and, he has been morally obtuse as he signed death letters of fallen American GIs using an autopen. Mr. Rumsfeld and the boss who continues to employ him have demonstrated ample moral confusion in the past 5 years.

One of my favorites, cscs' post at TPM Cafe puts it in a philosophical nutshell: " torture offers us so much moral clarity." TPM originator, Josh Marshall's post on the subject is very well written, and worth the read.
Another blogger, rationalreview's comment is just as edgy:

[editor's note: Want to talk about "moral confusion," Donald? Fine -- let's talk about referring to the unnecessary deaths, at US hands or as a known consequence of the US invasion of Iraq, of more than 40,000 civilians AT A MINIMUM, as "collateral damage." You're certainly an expert on confusion, but I doubt that you'd recognize morality if it slapped you upside the head - TLK] (08/29/06)

And you can imagine what DailyKos diarists have to say about The Rumsfeld Wisdom. Here are just a few links:

• mmontanaman - "Having studied and taught ethics, this article naturally caught my attention. . . "
• thereisnospoon - "To top it off, apparently Rumsfeld believes that Americans are deeply befuddled about themselves and the world--not only on an rational level, but on a deep-seated moral and personal level"
• kissfan - Open Letter - "You see, I know what threatens our country, Mr. Rumsfeld. It is you and the rest of this administration that insists we "stay the course" in Iraq while we allow our own country to go unprotected and the perpetrators of that horrific event to walk free."
• Hiro - "Rumsfeld calls 70% of the Nation Cowards. . . By that logic, since ~70% of the citizens of the United States disapprove of the way that the Bush Administration has handled the Iraq war, we all "lack courage".

There is nothing more to add to the blogosphere's derision of these most recent foolish remarks of the leadership in the current administration.
Tags: Bush administration news and politics Rumsfeld blogs bloggers commentary TPMCafe DailyKos