Deconstructing Rumsfeld

From Gregory Djerejian at Belgravia Dispatch:

Rumsfeld’s rhetorical tactics of late, it should be noted, are not infrequently rather similar to the Fuhrer’s, and this bears noting, I’d think….Indeed, as the failure of the Bush Administration’s war strategy becomes more and more evident to all but the most hardened denialists, as their desperation and incompetence becomes more evident to the American public, as their Middle East policy increasingly lies in tatters, and as they continue to erroneously attempt to conjoin things like the London terror plot with Iraq, without admitting the need for urgent re-appraisal of our overall strategy in the war on terror (they are incapable and/or too exhausted to make significant course corrections)–the rhetoric is beginning to border on dangerously reckless.

and on a follow up post:

It’s true, there is a lot of talk about "will" these days, isn’t there? Or faith too, of course. Neither constitute serious policy-making, however. More often, they represent merely aspirational fancy, or worse, propagandistic discourse. The former is not good enough, the latter dangerous.

Djerejian’s focus on the rhetoric and political overtones of the speech and not on the policy is, unfortunately, appropriate. The SecDef’s vocabulary is telling of an Administration that simply does not get it. Even at the moment of releasing a semi-competent National Strategy on Counter-Terrorism, the words of the Administration belie their true lack of faith and denial of its prescriptions.  We must look at the words being spoken as well as the actions being taken. Afterall, that’s what the world is doing.