Iraq should be a permanent stain on the former secretary of defense\u2019s name, even after his death on Wednesday.<\/b>
\nDonald Rumsfeld didn\u2019t lack belief, or conviction. In the words of the oft-quoted Yeats poem, the worst are full of passionate intensity. He believed in an exceptional America, he believed in the might and power of our armed forces, and he believed, too, that might and power are a kind of permission. A nation should do what it pleases if it can, as long as it\u2019s right \u2014 and Rumsfeld\u2019s America was always right. What kind of world did Rumsfeld\u2019s belief help build? On the occasion of his death, this is a question worth asking. Before the hagiographies commence, before the scolds complain that the left is being too harsh, examine the world as it stands today because of Rumsfeld. Iraq remains a war zone almost 20 years after the then-defense secretary shrugged off widespread looting in Iraq with a flippant \u201cstuff happens.\u201d The war on terror has endured for so long that it has embedded itself in our national functionality like a worm in a rotten piece of fruit. It is impossible to fathom what and where we would be without the wars that Rumsfeld orchestrated, and equally impossible to tell what we\u2019ve gained. The answer, seemingly, is nothing but death. Destruction and war, decades of it. Iraq will be Rumsfeld\u2019s legacy, with all of the lies, all of the torture, all of the killing. While many hands bear responsibility for such loss, two belonged to Rumsfeld, who had Saddam Hussein in his sights for years before 9\/11 gave him the excuse he\u2019d wanted to attack Iraq. Rumsfeld lived out the rest of his days with his impunity. His victims weren\u2019t so lucky. And there are so many of them. The prospect never seemed to bother him, much as he treated war itself like an easy jaunt in the park. \u201cReports that say that something hasn\u2019t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns,\u201d he said incoherently in 2002, implying that Iraq was arming terrorists. \u201cThere are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns \u2014 the ones we don\u2019t know we don\u2019t know.\u201d Even now, years later, Rumsfeld\u2019s infamous quote is difficult to decipher. It offends precisely because it\u2019s near gibberish. Rumsfeld\u2019s justification for war \u2014 that Iraq was developing stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction \u2014 rested on lies and garbled explanations to the public. For Iraqis, the results of Rumsfeld\u2019s conduct were catastrophic, with hundreds of thousands of people killed as a result of the U.S.-led invasion. More than 4,000 Americans have died as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and many more injured. The damage to the United States was also insidious \u2014 no country can kill and torture as freely as the U.S. has done without sacrificing its moral conscience in the process. The torture memo signed by Donald Rumsfeld,12\/2\/02, authorizing 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, the use of phobias, and stress positions for up to 4 hours. Note his handwriting at bottom: „However, I stand for 8-10 hours A day. Why is Standing limited to 4 hours“ pic.twitter.com\/F34zbkJ5HQ Consequences eluded Rumsfeld the rest of his life. Like George W. Bush, Rumsfeld enjoyed something of a reputation as an elder statesman. Like Bush, he even picked up a hobby in his elder years: He released an app called Churchill Solitaire in 2016. He announced this in a Medium post. \u201cChurchill Solitaire is not a game for everyone,\u201d he warned. \u201cIt takes patience and perseverance, cunning and concentration, and strategy and sacrifice.\u201d He was a very good player, he pledged. But geopolitics isn\u2019t a card game; there were lives attached to every move he made. He degraded those lives, and he degraded himself, and he degraded the nation he was so eager to serve. Rumsfeld dealt torture and death, then moved on like it was nothing. Stuff happens.<\/p>\n