Donald Rumsfeld: Dear America, The Bush Administration Screwed Up Iraq

…by Jonas E. Alexis

Donald Rumsfeld, one of the staunch defenders of the Iraq invasion, has recently lamented that George W. Bush was wrong. Pay close attention:

“The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words. I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories.”[1]

Is this the same Rumsfeld who politically stripped himself before audience and the entire nation declaring that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction? How did he suddenly come to this revelation? If he had those feelings in the beginning, why was he suppressing them?

In any event, so much for Ann Coulter, who never misses her opportunity to postulate claptrap about Iraq almost every two or three years or so. Coulter said that 2003 gave us “The magnificently successful Iraq War…”[2] Here is Coulter at her best:

“Contrary to liberals’ bizarro-world alternative history, Americans didn’t turn against Bush over the Iraq War. We had won, executed a dictator, presided over democratic elections, and killed loads of al Qaeda fighters.”[3]

Can this woman be serious? What is astonishingly shocking is that Coulter published this nonsense years after the scholarly literature has proven otherwise![4]

Going back to Rumsfeld. He doesn’t seem to be willing to face the consequences of the administration’s monumental blunder. Because of the dumb war, at least 26,000 deaths have occurred in the same country.[5] Certainly people like Rumsfeld need to turn themselves in.[6]

Perhaps Harvard University should send the Iraq study to Rumsfeld, Bush and others, if they are unaware of it. The study clearly shows that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone will cost Americans at least six trillion dollars.[7]

Is Rumsfeld ready to surrender to the authorities and put on his orange uniform? Saddam in his wildest dream could not have killed 26,000 people within a relatively short time. Who is really the real elephant in the room here? If Saddam was hanged presumably because he was a bad guy, what should be the fate of people like Rumsfeld, who still think that they can get away with their crime?

If Saddam was put on trial, isn’t it reasonable to put Rumsfeld and the Bush administration on trial as well? Is it possible that Vincent Bugliosi’s thesis is back on the table?

[1] Quoted in David Knowles, “Donald Rumsfeld: George W. Bush Was Wrong About Iraq,” Bloomberg, June 8, 2015.

[2] Ann Coulter, Never Trust a Liberal Over 3—Specially a Republican (WA: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 3.

[3] Ibid., 16-17.

[4] See for example John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2007); Paul R. Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); John J. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Vincent Bugliosi, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (New York: Perseus Books, 2008).

[5] Knowles, “Donald Rumsfeld: George W. Bush Was Wrong About Iraq,” Bloomberg, June 8, 2015.

[6] For a recent development, see Gene Healy, “Has the GOP Learned Anything from the Iraq Debacle?,” Cato Institute, June 4, 2015.

[7] Ernesto Londono, “Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion,” Washington Post, March 28, 2013; Bob Dreyfuss, The $6 Trillion Wars,” The Nation, March 29, 2013; “Iraq War Cost U.S. More Than $2 Trillion, Could Grow to $6 Trillion, Says Watson Institute Study,” Huffington Post, May 14, 2013; Mark Thompson, “The $5 Trillion War on Terror,” Time, June 29, 2011.

Jonas E. Alexis, Assistant Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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