What Is He Talking About?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned on Thursday against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq prematurely, saying it would be seen as a victory by extremists who want to control a region extending beyond the Middle East.

"If we left Iraq prematurely as the terrorists demand, the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing.

"And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us and all those who don't share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines," he said.

"And then we would face not only the evil ideology of these extremists, but an enemy that will have grown accustomed to succeeding in telling free people everywhere what to do."

Suddenly, we care what terrorists say?

When did the fact that "the enemy" demanded something matter to Donald Rumsfeld? And when did we start taking orders from them? Why would start, just because we have valid reasons to bring our troops home?

(Valid reasons like, for example, someone telling us that we'd probably be in Iraq less than six months. "It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." - Donald Rumsfeld, Feb.7, 2003)

This is the silliest domino theory ever. For one thing, it's not like the extremists aren't already demanding that we leave Muslim lands, particularly Saudi Arabia. (In fact, one of the reasons offered in support of "freeing" Iraq was that it would allow us to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia, where their presence is a long-standing source of friction.) The extremists are also already demanding the end of the state of Israel. It's not like they're waiting to 'defeat' us in Iraq to start making unreasonable demands. So what?

Really, what is he proposing? That, if we chose to leave Iraq, the terrorists would tell us to leave Afghanistan, and then we'd have to listen to them? Huh?

So, if we decide to withdraw our troops from Iraq, which just happens to be something that "the enemy" wants, we would have to do everything they want for ever and ever?

Is he suggesting that the only alternative is to do the opposite of what the terrorists say they want us to do? Do I need to point out that, if that is true, "then the terrorists have already won"?"

Suppose you wanted to tie down the vaunted military of the Great Satan for years, make it deplete its treasury at a prodigious rate, and continue to isolate it from its Western allies. You could issue videos demanding that US forces leave Iraq, and claim it will be a great victory for al Qaeda when they do. Voila! For a couple bucks in videotape, you've lured Donald Rumsfeld into spending billions of dollars in order to 'stay the course'. Talk about your force multiplier! Plus, you get to use their continued presence on the land of a sovereign Muslim nation as a propaganda tool, driving recruitment. How easy is that?!

The concept Rumsfeld is advancing is so ridiculous that one has to wonder if he is intentionally insulting the Senate with it. It seems more plausible that he wants to demonstrate his disregard for the opinions of Congress, offering them patent nonsense, than that he actually believed what he was saying.