Rumsfeld's definition of freedom...

The BBQ Pit
21

I gave my answer in the last post. People have been imprisoned pre-emptively, with no concern for due process and based on little but suspicion. Just because i’m not one of these people does not mean that i should ignore this attack on liberty.

I love it when people try to personalize this debate by asking “which of your liberties have been curtailed.” The asinine assumption of such an argument is that, just because i, personally, am not in custody or suffering, then everything must be OK. But this, i suppose, just reflects the self-centredness of such people. With all due respect.

22

For those who don’t seem to be bothered by the rampant looting (read: “untidiness”) and regard it as a harmless lark, I have one question:

Just where the hell do you think they’re going to get the money to rebuild the infrastructure and bureacracy that is now heading down the street in the arms of thieves?

Or does Bush propose to solve that with tax cuts for the wealthy, too?

23

Taking a single statement, out of context and made at a press briefing in response to a question and mistaking it for a “definition of freedom”, now that’s stupid.

24

Many Democrats would agree.
:wink:

25

Give me a fucking break, tosspot. Perhaps my thread title was a little ill-considered, but his comment was still ridiculous, no matter the context. Perhaps you can shed your GQ-induced hyper-fastidiousness for long enough to explain how the overall context of the briefing makes the following statement any more reasonable:

The argument i made earlier still stands - free people in societies that run by the rule of law are NOT “free” to do such things, if doing those things leads to a loss of freedom.

26

Fascinating, asshole. You’re still just posting shit looking for some cover for your embarrassment over how happy the Iraqis are to see the coalition forces.

Tell you what – If the military doesn’t take steps in the next week or so to restore civil order, revisit this thread and make your point. Absent that, go fuck yourself. You’re extrapolating an off-hand comment by a guy known for off-hand comments into a policy statment, and it’s just a fucking lie.

27

I was just gonna post the “context” of the question and answer, including the “freedom is untidy” yet mhendo got there first.

So I’ll just cut & paste another smart-ass Rummy quip:

…and add this article from The New York Times (registration required):

Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure

28

They looted the national museum? Now that’s just sad. :frowning:

29

manhattan - the Iraqi people also cheered Saddam. Let’s all take a chill pill and wait until they’re not under the watch of people w/guns to see what they really feel, ok?

I doubt they’re happy about the looting etc that they’re experiencing now. Time will tell if they’re happy with the next person we set up to govern them.

they may ultimately be happy w/what the US has done. I don’t think we can establish the level currently, nor can we presently see if in the long term it was a good thing.

(Note, this does not mean that I lack an understanding of how bad things were under Saddam. It does, however, acknowledge that we presently have insuffient data to assess the level of happiness of the average Iraqi citizen, nor do we currently possess the information necessary to assess what their future feelings will be. In point of fact presently, they do not have their own government, they’ve got armed soldiers from another nation in their cities, and lack critical supplies such as food, water and medical supplies, to live on. Their infrastructure is shot to hell, and they have our assurances that we’ll fix it all. I suggest that we wait till the Iraqi people are actually not under some one else’ rule to assess their true feelings about the US)

30

manhattan, sure the quote was out of context, but that doesn’t make it any less faulty. Certainly we shouldn’t give this any more weight than it deserves (a policy point it ain’t), but it would have been interesting if a journalist had asked about elaboration on this particular quote, then and there. Now, it just sort of lingers there for all to nitpick at.

31

mhendo, I’ll ask again. Which liberties have been curtailed?

The liberty to go to flight school to learn how to fly airplanes, but not land them?

The liberty to overstay your visa?

The liberty to raise money to finance terrorism?

The liberty to attend terrorist training camps?

The liberty to fight alongside the Taliban?

The liberty to carry explosives in your shoes onto airplanes?

Oh, I guess you’re right. Those liberties have been curtailed. Gotta problem with that?

32

No, it doesn’t, Coldfire. That’s why I linked to the whole press conference.

Some other stuff:

"Q: But I guess what I’m not hearing here is, either one of you gentlemen, what tasks, with some specificity if you can, what U.S. military forces in Baghdad will now be doing to help calm the situation, or do you just –

Rumsfeld: They’re already doing it. They’re already going to hospitals that are being looted and stopping it. If you look carefully, you’ll see images of people being arrested for looting, and they’re walking out with those little white things on their wrists and said “Don’t do that.” And, they take them out of there and they tell them to go someplace else. And, that’s happening all over the place.

Myers: Here’s the –

Rumsfeld: Our folks are operating to the extent they can in Baghdad in creating a presence and dissuading people from looting. And, for suddenly the biggest problem in the world to be looting is really notable."

and from before the quoted part:

Q: Mr. Secretary, you spoke of the television pictures that went around the world earlier of Iraqis welcoming U.S. forces with open arms. But now television pictures are showing looting and other signs of lawlessness. Are you, sir, concerned that what’s being reported from the region as anarchy in Baghdad and other cities might wash away the goodwill the United States has built? And, are U.S. troops capable of or inclined to be police forces in Iraq?

"Rumsfeld: Well, I think the way to think about that is that if you go from a repressive regime that has – it’s a police state, where people are murdered and imprisoned by the tens of thousands – and then you go to something other than that – a liberated Iraq – that you go through a transition period. And in every country, in my adult lifetime, that’s had the wonderful opportunity to do that, to move from a repressed dictatorial regime to something that’s freer, we’ve seen in that transition period there is untidiness, and there’s no question but that that’s not anyone’s choice.

On the other hand, if you think of those pictures, very often the pictures are pictures of people going into the symbols of the regime – into the palaces, into the boats, and into the Ba’ath Party headquarters, and into the places that have been part of that repression. And, while no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime.

With respect to the second part of your question, we do feel an obligation to assist in providing security, and the coalition forces are doing that. They’re patrolling in various cities. Where they see looting, they’re stopping it, and they will be doing so. The second step, of course, is to not do that on a permanent basis but, rather, to find Iraqis who can assist in providing police support in those cities and various types of stabilizing and security assistance, and we’re in the process of doing that."

Coldfire, it was a wisecrack in the middle of hostile questioning. Rummy does that.

33

That’s the way - shift the issue so you can argue that i’m some whining liberal who’s all broke up about the war. You sure you’re not Brutus posting as a sock? Your strategy might make you feel better, but it ignores completely the issue that i was raising, which had virtually nothing to do with the war itself.

It is certainly true that i was against this war, but now that it has been prosecuted i am very happy that Saddam Hussein is out of the picture (dead or otherwise), and i certainly hope that the Iraqi people can, with the help of the international community, set about rebuilding their country and making it a great nation.

Contrary to your wholly unsubstatiated and typically snide assertion, i suffer no embarrassment regarding the happiness (or otherwise) or the Iraqi people. It is obvious that plenty of them are very happy to see the coalition forces, and i hope that the coming transition period does not cause them to regret their jubilation. There’s still a long way to go.

This whole thread had virtually nothing to do with the civil unrest itself, and nor was it designed as a party-political or war-related jibe. My OP was concerned with a particular statement and its implication for meanings of freedom. I know its very convenient for you to indulge in ad hominem attacks rather than addressing that issue, because it prevents the need for rational analysis and considered argument.

The closest you have come to rationality is when you say that i have extrapolated “an off-hand comment” into “a policy statement.” Well, first of all, perhaps the American people have the right to expect that their Secretary of Defense not be so off-hand during important, on-the-record, for-public-consumption press briefing and conferences about such crucial topics as war and social order. He is Secretary of Defense, ferchissakes, not some low-level functionary. His words have power and set the tone for debate in many ways, and deserve to be examined accordingly.

And, actually, i take the exact opposite position to the one you ascribe to me. I don’t think this statement is representative of general policy (Rumsfeld’s or the Administration’s), nor was i trying to exptrapolate it in such a way. I was simply addressing the statement itself, and asserting that it was a pretty poor way to define freedom. Because, while it didn’t claim to be an all-encompassing definition of the term, it did offer at least one criterion for judging a free society. My argument is that this criterion is a very poor one, because it could apply to just about any country on the planet, “free” or otherwise.

It’s interesting that you take me to task for pulling the quote out of context, but are apparently unwilling to offer an answer to my question about how the context makes the statement any more reasonable.

34

And the idiocy continues. You now imply that i support these sorts of things just because i don’t agree with you. What a fucking moron.

Unless you’ve been on another planet for the past 18 months, you would know that some of the people being held since September 11 have done NONE of the things on your little shopping list. Some are being held purely as material witnesses to things that they MIGHT have seen that someone else MIGHT have done. Many of these material witnesses are charged with nothing and have not even been brought in front of a court to testify in the cases for which they have been detained.

And, of those who are suspects themselves, many have been charged with no crime, have had no access to lawyers, and have had writs of habeas corpus, filed by lawyers on behalf of families, denied.

And these are not just visitors or resident aliens; some are US citizens.

THAT is what i mean when i talk about a decline in liberty. You can twist it all you like and continue to imply that i must support terrorism, but that don’t make it so.

35

mhendo: “Well, first of all, perhaps the American people have the right to expect that their Secretary of Defense not be so off-hand during important, on-the-record, for-public-consumption press briefing and conferences about such crucial topics as war and social order.”
flaps arms in wild gesticulation
“Oh my goodness!”

Of course that’s correct, yet much as I dislike Rummy - he’s a character.

However, he’s spinning burning and looting as the birth of liberty, anarchy as the the necessary, expected throes of freedom.

I’m fairly certain the US will expend far more time, personnel and effort in Iraq post-war than was part of the plan - whatever Rummy says.

36

By no stretch of the imagination did I intend to imply that you support terrorism. Still, I’d like a cite for a single, solitary, U.S. citizen’s rights being denied. Do you have one?

37

Just FTR, here is the full Rummy quote from whence the OP’s clip came:

Sounds to me like he’s just saying “dont judge the situation based on a 15-second news clip – you could take a 15-second news clip and make life here in the US sound anarchic, but that doesn’t make it so.”

38

of course, there are those who wish us to judge the situation based on 15 second news clips of people cheering and tearing down statues. But that’s different.

39

Maybe it was - I certainly don’t know Rumsfeld as well as you do, in that you’ve had more media exposure to him, most likely. I don’t know much about his sense of humour.

As for the questioning being hostile: well, yeah, but they’re valid questions. The GWB administration promised a liberation. They delivered it, for better or worse. But what’s the follow-up, now that signs of lawlesness are beginning to show? Valid questions, IMHO. And perhaps not the time to crack wise, especially not when the wisecrack itself is poorly phrased at best, and a downright misrepresentation at worst.

But yeah, the whole incident has been blown up a tad in this thread. It’s not like he outright defended the looting or anything.

40

Rumsfeld basically did blow it off as a stupid question. Also note how he blew-off follow-up questions from some reporters. It’s his modus-operandi. And Ari Fleischer’s too (but that’s another egghead, I mean egg, to crack).

The Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (well known as the residence of international press) was fired on by a tank shell that killed two people. It was a valid question to ask if a firing a tank shell was a reasonable response to “sniper fire”. The Pentagon responded with “rules of engagement” babble - as if that applies in this war. Most believe it was a battlefield decision - perhaps wrong, obviously regretful, of a tank commander. However, VP Cheney declared in a speech that anyone who thought the US was targeting reporters were “stupid”.

It’s that deriding attitude from the Executive branch of the US government that pisses folks off. “That’s a stupid question - don’t ask it again” is the underlying meaning. It very much subverts freedom of speech and press.

To their credit, the Military briefings are done professionally, with respect for the reporters and those of us who are watching them. Now, of course the amount of information they give is minimal (and often scripted) - yet they’re not spinning some bullshit about this war.