The Rumsfeld memo is…

The Rumsfeld memo is being defended by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in much in the way I concluded yesterday:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said the memo, which poses more questions than answers, was written to generate ideas on how to begin the secretary’s long-term goal of transforming the Defense Department to meet new threats.

“The experts will tell you that if you talk to somebody about change or transformation of anything, they will tell you that the larger an organization and the older an organization, the more difficult it is to change it, and it’s not going to happen unless you have a CEO bought into the need for change. So, what you’re seeing in this memo, the way we do business, is that our boss is challenging us with a lot of questions on are we changing ourselves to deal with this 21st century threat environment we find ourselves in,” Myers said.

Rumsfeld is challenging the status quo in the DoD because the status quo in the world changed on 9/11. He’s not ducking the hard questions, he’s got the courage to be asking them, and he wants answers.

Of course, the Democrats are willing to use anything at all for political gain:

“Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments are an illustration of the concern that they have about the failure of their policies in Iraq so far. There can be no other description of those words than that,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Rumsfeld is thinking outside the box. Daschle is still inside the box, criticizing anyone who leaves it, and hoping that criticism garners him and his party more votes. Never mind that these kinds of memos and questions and challenges are necessary, nay required, for this new warfare if we want to survive it. Nope, for Tom Daschle, power is the prime mover.

The good news is that not all Democrats think the same way.

Many members of Congress said it was critical the questions Rumsfeld raised be addressed.

“This is a far-reaching call for his advisers to think outside the box,” said Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, who met with Rumsfeld Wednesday.

“Are we winning or losing the global war on terrorism? Those questions need to be answered,” said Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

But there are still plenty of those that just don’t get it.

Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., was more critical. He said the memo showed the administration has exaggerated its success in the war on terrorism.

Not so. These questions are ones about getting at the root of the terrorism weed, and we wouldn’t even need to be asking them if we were still frightened, hunkered down behind our own borders, hoping that it wasn’t our building that would be dive bombed next. Instead we’re making progress in the war on terrorism. These questions highlight that we’ve made good progress and now need to look at the tougher issues.

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