Rumsfeld takes the fall

There is enormous satisfaction around the world at President George W. Bush’s abrupt firing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. For six years Bush praised Rumsfeld highly and doggedly defended him against all critics. Just a week before axing him, Bush pledged to the world that he would keep Rumsfeld on until the end of his term.

Yet the day after the mid-term election debacle for the Republicans, Bush summarily threw overboard his hated, arrogant architect of the Iraq invasion and occupation in a terse ceremony lasting under five minutes.

All progressive humanity cheered with satisfaction at the ouster of the man responsible for the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, Baghram Air Base and Guantanamo; for his defense of the CIA policy of rendition; for the tactics of mass roundup and arbitrary imprisonment of tens of thousands of people; for the implementation of a war and occupation that has taken hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and for the wholesale destruction brought down upon both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But these are not the reasons why Bush fired him. Rumsfeld’s policies are Bush’s policies.

Among the numerous reasons he was cashiered is the fact that weeks ago the Bush administration heard the anti-war rumblings in the electorate. All Bush’s denials to the contrary, he and Karl Rove fully expected that the Republicans would be swamped at the polls. Looking for some way to placate the anti-war sentiment in the country, Bush began negotiating behind the scenes to find a new secretary of defense.

In addition, Rumsfeld was fired because of a revolt in the military establishment that he had ordered to carry out Mission Impossible: to conquer and subdue the anti-colonial masses of Iraq. A procession of retired generals called for Rumsfeld’s resignation earlier this year. But the final straw came when the Military Times, owned by the Gannet newspaper chain and reflecting the opinion of the active-duty brass, called for Rumsfeld’s resignation two days before the election.

Above all, Rumsfeld was fired because the determined Iraqi resistance has destroyed the Rumsfeld Doctrine. This doctrine conceives of winning wars through the use of high technology, rapid deployment of special forces, and “shock and awe” massive air power, thus avoiding having to resort to the unpopular draft. His doctrine completely underestimated the determination of the anti-colonial Iraqis to fight enslavement.

Bush could hold on to Rumsfeld only until it was clear that the U.S. forces in Iraq had slipped from maintaining a stalemate into losing control on the ground—in Baghdad and other key cities.

Rumsfeld’s replacement, former CIA Director Robert Gates from the administration of the first Bush, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. James Baker, a senior adviser to that administration, and former Congressperson Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, head this group, whose goal is really to find a solution for U.S. imperialism regarding its crisis in Iraq.

The Democratic Party leaders, whenever they are pushed to say what they are going to do about Iraq, uniformly refer to the Iraq Study Group and its expected report as the magic savior of the situation. In short, the Democrats have no plan.

U.S. imperialism’s dilemma in Iraq is the following: it cannot stay there because the resistance is growing stronger every day; it cannot leave because it wants to avoid conceding defeat (and leaving all that oil behind). The Pentagon is powerless to stop the resistance but the ruling class fears being a “superpower” humbled by a people’s army. No study group can find a way out of this dilemma.