Remembering a politician from years ago

In 1941 Donny, a kid my age, came to my mother’s 8 week summer camp on our dairy farm in southern Wisconsin.  Donny was a leader, full of ideas and fit right in.  We rode horses, fed pigs and chickens, rode the hay wagons, played in the woods, fished, swam, sang and ate piles of food.

Fast forward 74 years.  Donny is Donald Rumsfeld, former CEO of Chicago based G.D. Searle & Co. and  Secretary of Defense in the GW Bush administration.  I’ve watched Donny over the years.  I vividly recall a press conference when he was questioned about the looting of valuable museum items in Baghdad right after the Iraq invasion.  His response:   “Oh, things happen.  Next question.”  And later his equally dismissive answers when questioned about the torture at Abu Ghraib prison

Just the other day I read an opinion piece by William Rivers Pitt, Truthout’s Senior Editor and lead columnist. Here’s a bit of it.

“A few days ago Donald Rumsfeld of all people told the Times Of London that the idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to him  unrealistic.  He said he was concerned about it when he first heard those words, then added that he is not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories.  He then broke both of his ankles pivoting to say, oh no, he absolutely didn’t say that, because the war was totally awesome and necessary”.

Pitt goes on to say:  “These people are dangerous.....but they are not dumb. It (the war) was a deliberate and calculated payday, one of many over many years and at the expense of many departed souls, for a war industry that needs to be broken across the knee of this democracy , if this democracy can still be said to exist.”

The Donny types are dangerous.  And do not at all represent what my mother drilled into us kids during summer camp years ago.  And that youth camp ran for almost 40 years.  There is still hope.

Bob McClellan