Rumsfeld: War critics are like Nazi appeasers

Robert Burns

SALT LAKE CITY — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday the world faces “a new type of fascism” and likened critics of the Bush administration’s war strategy to those who tried to appease the Nazis in the 1930s.

He portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral or intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security.

Speaking to several thousand veterans at the American Legion’s national convention, Rumsfeld quoted Winston Churchill as observing that trying to accommodate Adolf Hitler was “a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.”

“Can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?” he asked.

“Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy — is the real source of the world’s troubles?”

Rumsfeld spoke as part of a White House strategy, in advance of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, to take the offensive against administration critics amid growing calls to withdraw U.S. troops.

He recalled recent terrorist attacks and said it should be obvious to anyone that terrorists must be confronted.

“But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons,” he said, adding that the U.S. news media have tended to emphasize the negative rather than the positive.

He did acknowledge that the U.S. military has its own “bad actors — the ones who dominate the headlines today — who don’t live up to the standards of the oath and of our country.” But he added that they’re a small percentage of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and lies and distortions being told about our troops and about our country,” he said.

On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld made separate addresses to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev. Rumsfeld made similar arguments in Reno.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a former Army officer and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Rumsfeld’s comments “a political rant to cover up his incompetence.”

Reed is a longtime critic of Rumsfeld’s handling of the war. He said he took particular exception to the implication that critics of Pentagon policies are unpatriotic, citing “scores of patriotic Americans of both parties who are highly critical of his handling of the Department of Defense.”