We Must Be Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Watching Don Rumsfeld deliver his reproachment to the American people last week in the White House, I was reminded of Dot Black’s testimony before John Grisham’s fictional Tennessee jury in “The Rainmaker”. Reading a letter from the insurance company which was denying her claim on behalf of her dying son, the company’s claims adjuster scolded Mrs. Black for her simply not understanding the reasons for the repeated denial with the reproachful, “You must be stupid, stupid, stupid”.

In case any of you missed Rumsfeld’s performance, you can still catch it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NTEDfAHo2U. In a rather disjointed, short-but-rambling comment, the Secretary essentially blamed the American public for his dismissal/resignation because the public lacked the intelligence to understand exactly what it is that we’re doing in Iraq:

These six years…its been quite a time….The great respect I have for your leadership, Mr. President in this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the twenty first century. Uh, it is not well known, it is not well understood, it is complex for people to comprehend and I know with certainty that over time the contributions you’ve made will be recorded by history.”

Complex for us to understand? Explain it to us, Don, please help us to understand. Explain to us which part we don’t understand and haven’t understood. If you’re referring to your decision to fight the war with too few troops to actually secure the peace, you’re absolutely right. We don’t get it. If you’re talking about so over-extending our military as to render us incapable of even responding adequately to domestic crises, you’re right again. We don’t get that either. If, instead, you’re referring to your failure to provide the troops with adequate armor from the outset with its antecedent wasting of our best and brightest, right again, Don…we don’t understand that one, either nor did we understand your scolding of an enlisted man when he had the audacity to ask about the lack of body armor. Didn’t get that one though it did make for good theater. I know…it must be your decision back in 2003 to cut the pay of the service men and women serving in Iraq and to cut benefits due to the families of those troops…things like health benefits and death benefits at the very moment that your troops were being shredded day in and day out by IDEs and sniper fire. Right again, Don. We never understood that one, either.

This woeful litany of public ignorance is too long for our purposes here. Suffice it to say, Don, you are right. We don’t get any of it…way too complex.

Putting aside the fact that we shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first instance, once committed to going forward am I to understand that it is we, the People, who do not now understand that the entire strategy for prosecuting this outrage was ill-conceived and so poorly executed as to raise the question of criminal conduct on the part of you, Mr. Rumsfeld and the President for whom you expressed such great respect last week.

In truth, Mr. Secretary, the only thing that we did fail to understand in time is that your incompetence, your arrogance and your hubris would take such a human, political and economic toll.

Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld, you must be stupid, stupid, stupid.

Good riddance.