As many of you know, I've been an active supporter of the Bush administration for many years, but I want to take a moment to comment on one cabinet member in particular who has taken a lot of heat lately.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has come under fire recently for what some perceive to be a "bloody quagmire in Iraq which sucks the souls of US soldiers and Iraqis -- both terrorist insurgents and innocent civilians -- into a vortex of imperialist bloodletting, nihilism, revenge, chaos, and deathmongering". But it's important to remember -- as President Bush recently reminded us -- that Mr. Rumsfeld is indeed a caring fellow. I, too, know his heart, and I want to use the opportunity of today's post to educate people about the truth behind Mr. Rumsfeld's rough and gruff exterior.

Donald Quentin Rumsfeld was born on July 9, 1932, the son of migrant South American farmworkers. Growing up in the depression-era dustbowl fields of California, young Donny (as he was called by young chums) spent his days dancing for pennies in the town square of Los Muertes. He watched his parents toil endlessly in the lettuce fields, and dedicated himself at a young age to eradicating the injustices which his proud family was forced to endure.

After financing his way through Princeton University by working three jobs (taxi driver, machinist, and custodian at the local YMCA) while also keeping up a full course load, Mr. Rumsfeld joined the US Navy as an aviator. (During this time he saved his best friend's life by killing a wild boar with his bare hands.) His position as military officer was not free from moral complexity, however; it was in his early Navy days that Donald began to study the works of Hannah Arendt, Dorothy Day, and A. J. Muste. His intellectual diversions created a significant moralistic rift in his consciousness, but young Donald eventually decided that he could do the most good for humanity by working within the system, rather than from the outside. "I knew I had to be near the levers of power," he said to a Navy buddy in 1958, "despite their demonic potential to corrupt my conscience."

Rumsfeld was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1962, and became one of Congress's loudest voices against US aggression in Viet Nam. In 1969 he tried to support Seymour Hersh's efforts to expose a massive coverup of the My Lai massacre, and eventually resigned from the House in disgust to protest official stonewalling. (On the floor of the House, he called the US military's actions "a national disgrace" and offered "personal apologies for the war crimes of my fellow Americans.")

Of course, Mr. Rumsfeld landed, as always, on his feet. Nixon appointed him Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, where he worked tirelessly to promote the equal rights of working Americans, especially in communities of color. Hoping to revive the "Poor People's Campaign" instigated by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rumsfeld advocated for many government programs and community-based action plans that would radically transform the economic disparities of the American landscape. "A nation which ignores its economic cancers," he told a crowd of supporters in 1971, "is a nation which will someday suffer the wrath of its poorest citizens." Unfortunately, these efforts were stymied by business-as-usual politicians and bureaucrats seeking to maintain the status quo.

After a brief stint as US abmassador to NATO, Rumsfeld served as White House Chief of Staff to Gerald Ford, who eventually appointed him Secretary of Defense. At this time, Rumsfeld was profoundly influenced by the work of Cesar Chavez and Angela Davis. (Rumsfeld was said to keep several copies of Davis's Autobiography around his house, extensively bookmarked and highlighted.) Rumsfeld was also deeply moved by the Native American protest occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. While he disagreed with their use of weapons, Rumsfeld maintained a strong perspective of solidarity with their cause of freedom and justice.

Rumsfeld worked with a variety of grassroots organizations during his years in the Ford Administration, including the United Farm Workers the National Organization for Women and the Mattachine Society. In addition, Rumsfeld insisted on volunteering three nights a week at a local homeless shelter. (In an interview from 1975, he said: "Our confrontations of evil must take place on the small scale as well as the large. It is not enough -- not nearly enough -- to work against the unjust machinations of larger society; we must also break down the structures of inequality right in our own backyards.")

In the late '70s and throughout the 1980s, Rumsfeld dedicated himself to full-time service work. Paying himself a tiny stipend from his savings (left over from the vast sums he had donated to groups like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the then-newborn International Socialist Organization), Rumsfeld worked with Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco to found People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1980. A lifelong lover of animals, Rumsfeld was shocked by a 1978 tour of a slaughterhouse in west Texas. "I was sick," he told a reporter after the tour. "I decided on that day that I would never again cause an animal to suffer for my appetites." He began to study the issue in his typical academic fashion, and decided that public awareness campaigns -- together with occasional nonviolent direct action -- were the best way to stop the rampant abuse of animals he saw in American society. Mr. Rumsfeld remains a strict vegan to this day.

In the 1980s, President Reagan invited him to serve as his special envoy to the Middle East, a position Rumsfeld was unsure about. While he disapproved of Reagan's uncritical support of Israel -- especially in light of that nation's unwillingness to withdraw to pre-1967 borders, which Rumsfeld considered to be an indisputable requirement -- he decided that, again, he could best serve the interests of human rights and democracy by operating in the halls of power. As for the ill-fated photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, he told a reporter in 1994: "It was a trick. I was told I would be meeting with Palestinian activist and intellectual Edward Said. You think I would have shaken hands with that psycho if I'd been thinking clearly? If I had any moral courage, I would have enacted seppuku years ago." Still, Rumsfeld continued to push for human rights and obedience to international law throughout the Middle East, even as his efforts were blocked by US officials back home.

This same "insider as agitator" thinking led him to join the Project for the New American Century in 1995, where he advocated -- as best he could -- for the abolition of the WTO ("Their insidious Structural Adjustment Programs enslave the people of third world while lining the pockets of wealthy corporations," he said at a conference in 1997) and a new multilateralist US foreign policy based on strict adherence to international law and cooperation at the United Nations. Naturally, his views were viewed with skepticism and even scorn by the more traditional sectors of the Project, but he refused to abandon his belief in the need for the US to promote true justice and peace.

In 2000, of course, Rumsfeld was chosen as President George W. Bush's defense secretary, a position he accepted with trademark unease. His period of indecision was unusually long -- and public. "Sometimes I feel as though my life in government service has been misguided," he told a family friend in February 2000. "I wonder if my focus on policy doesn't detract from the social and cultural realities which play every bit as significant a role in the lives of my fellow humans." Ultimately, of course, he decided to accept the position, and has worked nonstop ever since to guarantee that US soldiers receive the very best equipment, training, salary, benefits, and medical care.

Sadly, the most recent brouhaha surrounding Mr. Rumsfeld -- regarding his comment to a soldier that "you go to war with the army you have not the army you might want" -- is a classic case of miscommunication. In 1996, Rumsfeld had worked with F. J. Corbato, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to develop a proposal for state of the art AI-equipped military transport that could not only detect incoming enemy fire, but neutralize any threatening ordnance, locate its source, and immobilize the system which had fired it. In his presentation before the American Academy of Military Science, Rumsfeld said:

The weapons systems of today aren't good enough. It should not be satisfactory to any concerned observer that our young soldiers must make do with insufficient armor while their well-paid superiors travel in impenetrable fortresses. If we expect these brave men and women to protect our national interests (a questionable term to which we may return later), then the least we owe them is the guarantee of secure transport.

That his research nearly ten years prior had specifically focused on armored transport proves that Mr. Rumsfeld was simply being careless with his recent comment to the Iraq-bound soldier.

Thus we see that Donald Rumsfeld's heart is indeed good; and that President Bush was giving something of an understatement when he spoke of Rumsfeld's anguish on his regular visits to Walter Reed. Bush decided -- at Rumsfeld's request -- not to comment on his defense secretary's insistence on funding daycare activities for the children of overseas soldiers; and his personal attendance at every funeral for a fallen soldier since the war began. This last point is one which has elicited an unusual cynical note from the normally graceful Rumsfeld: "It was the signatures that got me," he told Larry King earlier this week.

I knew it would; it was so stupid of me to use that stamp. I figured that since I made it a point to attend every funeral for fallen soldiers myself, the formality of the letter wouldn't matter so much. You know, I always play taps myself. Anyway, I didn't think that the technical aspects of the letter -- using a stamp instead of signing them myself -- would be a big deal, especially with the college scholarship I offer each fallen soldier's child. But I guess . . . you know, some people -- they're hung up on symbols.

Well, I forgive you, Mr. Rumsfeld -- and I wish you the very best in the years to come. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

TimeWaster™

The Music of Pi is very cool, but I wish they'd worked rhythm into the program a little, too.

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