Tell Us About The Rabbits, Bob
I was never a big Rumsfeld guy. Maybe it was the gruff fighter-pilot persona or maybe it was the slick 1961 unmovable hair-do or the shoulder shrugging or the heavy sighs or the way he emasculated the generals standing right next to him in press conferences. Or maybe it was the way he fielded every question put to him with an utterly astonishing mixture of home-spun corn-pone bewilderment and Grand Ole Uncle Technocrat exasperated-yet-bemused condescension, the latter deflating what should have been the leavening former so it all just came out as a giant shit-cake we were all supposed to be thrilled to be served.

The problems are enormous, he would always tell us, endlessly complicated and my golly, why don't you take these two bits and go get yourself a grape Nehi while the grown-ups talk, Adorably Stupid Voter-Person.

Really there was only so much of it I could take. If I'm going to be talked to as though I were a cocker spaniel, I'll pay the nice lady with the riding crop and the leash like I usually do. That's some healthy, consensual humiliation. You escape the rigors of everyday decision-making for an hour at a time with Mistress Vercingetorixa. You don't put her at the top of the military chain of command.

Mostly I'm just bitter because the fucker quit before I got done reading Bob Woodward's State of Denial. I got done, was all worked up, started to scream "You pompous motherfucker!" at my TV when I see this Gates dude looking all grim and serious, decidedly less evasive and generally keeping his spoken answers to questions under 180,000 words.

But still, I wasn't really comforted. I mean, who was this Gates dude, right? Rummy was Rummy, but come on. Devil you know and all that.

Gates comes out and says clearly that we are losing in Iraq. Wow, freshness. Candor. Then he presses the point over the next two weeks until now he's openly talking about how we're dangling on the edge of a total "calamity" that will "haunt" us if we fail, which--remember--he already told us we were doing.

You know what, I was never a Rumsfeld guy, but at least all we had were his actions to scare the living shit out of us. I don't know if I'm down with with new attitude of realistically assessing the ground-state of things in Iraq in open and public fora where me and my questionable colorectal continence can hear it.

Sure, Rumsfeld was a dick-face, but maybe dick-face was kind of what we need in a SecDef right now.

Look what's happened in the world since he left. I mean, how fucked up does the world have to get before the Palestinians are more pissed off at other Palestinians than they are at Israel? That can't only terrify me, can it?

"Oh well," you're saying in your Rumsfeldian questioning way, "these are Palestinians. They are people who only know violence, who suffer from terrible poverty and deprivation of every stripe and for whom--gee whiz!--if they were only to look up, they would see that in many respects--some quantifiable and some not--the sky is actually falling, Henny Penny."

To which I would respond "Fine, douchebag." But then I would ask you to also to consider the fact that since this Gates person has taken over as SecDef:

Laura Bush got skin cancer.

Dogs have been cloned... in a country where they eat dogs!

And how do you explain this:

Madness, I say! Total lawless havoc-y amok-ish madness!

I'm not saying bring back Rumsfeld. I'm not. But if some crazy shit keeps happening like, say, Saskatchewan invades Manitoba or Aruba develops nuclear weapons, you're going to wish there was someone who would take the time to publicly imply that you weren't smart enough to understand it. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 4.1


Pops




PROGRAM NOTE
This afternoon, I shall be making the trek to the glorious Ontario Airport to pick up long-staying houseguests for the fucking holidays. This coupled with the regular vacation times of my children and spouse (starting in two days) means there is potential for some sporadic Bucket through the beginning of the year. I shall endeavor, as per usual, to do my level best to bring the wordy goodness to you. But if I'm missing for a day or two or late here and there, you are released from your obligation to assume I've been kidnapped by terrorists and/or illegal aliens and immediately call the FBI. We, the Bucket management, thank you for your patience and continued patronage. We now return you to your normally scheduled blog-reading, already in progress.
- posted by Pops @ 9:15 AM