What on earth is this?
President Bush on Wednesday chastised his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, for Mr. Rumsfeld’s handling of a scandal over the American abuse of Iraqis held at a notorious prison in Baghdad, White House officials said. The disclosures by the White House officials, under authorization from Mr. Bush, were an extraordinary display of finger-pointing in an administration led by a man who puts a high premium on order and loyalty. The officials said the president had expressed his displeasure to Mr. Rumsfeld in an Oval Office meeting because of Mr. Rumsfeld’s failure to tell Mr. Bush about photographs of the abuse, which have enraged the Arab world.
If Bush genuinely thinks Rumsfeld failed him and failed to fulfill his own responsibilities, then surely the time has finally come to demand Rumsfeld’s resignation. If not, then an authorized public humiliation is unjustified. This looks like Bush attempting to deflect responsbility away from himself– “The buck stops with that guy”– while simultaneously refusing to demand that Rumsfeld take responsibility. It’s petulant and childish.
As Chris Strohm notes, my piece on responsibility and apologies was written before news about Abu Ghraib became public. It included the following:
he White House has lost credibility in Iraq as well as with the American public about its seriousness in the project of stabilizing the occupied country. That loss of credibility is now spiraling. Iraqis don’t want to work with, be seen to support, or stake their futures on the success of the American project. And their unwillingness to commit makes our project more difficult every day. The U.S. needs to reverse that spiral. And it can’t do so with mere words, because no one believes our words anymore. An announcement of a big increase in troop deployment accompanied by Rumsfeld’s resignation letter might start the process of convincing Iraqis that the U.S. really doesn’t mean to cut and run. Of course, that would violate the administration’s no-accountability policy for its officials.
Even so I’ve been astonished at the (morally and politically) botched job that has been done of responding to Abu Ghraib. (See Spencer Ackerman, Fred Kaplan, and the Chris Strohm story linked to above.) The President’s non-apology yesterday, and the non-responsible attribution of responsibility to Rumsfeld today, are amazing and appalling.
WHatever credibility Rumsfeld had left has now been fatally undermined. It’s time to demand that he take responsibility and resign; he can no longer do his job anyways. The failure of the White House to understand that seems to be tied to a sense that, while Bush can judge Rumsfeld, no one else has any business doing so. Utterly obtuse.
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