USA Today reports on…

USA Today reports on a memo Rumsfeld sent out. Granted, it sounds more dour than his typical public pronouncements, but I would imagine part of the reason he is more upbeat outwardly is that he’s got, not just the military’s, but the entire nation’s morale in his hands. Still, let’s take a look at the 3 points USA Today notes:

• The United States is “just getting started” in fighting the Iraq-based terror group Ansar Al-Islam.
  Administration officials have been saying we’re just getting started with terrorists in general. There has never been the illusion (even in Rumsfeld’s “positive public comments”) that this was going to be anything but a long, hard fight. No news here.
• The war is hugely expensive. “The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ cost of millions.”
  What war isn’t hugely expensive? Although, that’s not exactly what Rumsfeld is saying. He’s simply noting that terrorism costs less than protecting the citizens plus routing the terrorists from their holes/havens/palaces, and that this reality is something that should be taken into consideration. No news here.
• Postwar stabilization efforts are very difficult. “It is pretty clear the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.”
  See the first item. Stabilizing Iraq means instituting a government of the people, not of the Ba’athists. This takes time. Another country you may be familiar with took about 7 years to go from post-war to constitution. The U.N. thinks Iraq should be ready to go it alone in less than 1. Rumsfeld is correct in saying that it will take more time than those in the ivory tower think it should. No news here.

So this is not really news at all. The three main topic pointed out by USA Today don’t really give us any information we don’t already have, or could figure out with the simplest knowledge of history.

That, of course, hasn’t stopped others from trying to prove that, when things don’t go precisely as planned, those plans were just trash talk to get the gullible citizenry on-board. The implication being that this never happens with plans laid by Democrats. Admitting that fighting terrorism is a new kind of war and that we may need radical changes in how we prosecute this war vs. those in the past is being portrayed by Bush-haters as a sign of stupidity or weakness, instead of what it really is; a bold, paradigm-shifting solution to a different kind of threat. Again, the implication is that a Democrat would have done the same ol’ things in the same ol’ ways because “we’ve always done it that way before”. Is this the “progressive” thinking that liberals so highly tout?

Rumsfeld’s memo shows he is a realist and a visionary. That’s the kind of person we need in charge of our post-9/11 military.

UPDATE: A thanks to Mr. Preston at Junkyard Blog for linking to this entry from his in-depth commentary on the subject.

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