Athenae, War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq

Rumsfeld Isn’t Sorry

Not that it would matter if he was:

Rumsfeld and McNamara seem to be very different kinds of people.

They couldn’t be more different. But they presided over disastrous wars. That’s not OK. You can be reflective, you can be remorseful, you can be really engaged by the tales of what you have done and haven’t done. And McNamara realized this. There’s no magic slate for any of us; we can’t just pull up the acetate and it all goes away.

McNamara at least had some regrets that he was willing to share.

Rumsfeld is also willing to share the fact that he has no regrets, isn’t sorry, sees nothing wrong with what he’s done. In fact, he’s proud of it.

Well, and I’m not sure it matters either way. If he’s sorry, then fuck him. If he’s not sorry, fuck him. The dead are dead. The wounded are wounded. There aren’t degrees here, where if you’re sorry you go to a slightly higher level of hell. Nobody cares about their immortal souls but them. To the rest of us, all that matters are the results.

A.

2 thoughts on “Rumsfeld Isn’t Sorry”

  2. Still, evil. I mean–I think it matters. I think we have to know and have to confront this. Its not really what Arendt meant by the banality of evil, but in some sense its truer to the reality maybe even than what she meant w/r/t Eichmann. Because Rumsfeld was present at, and an architect of, something just as evil as what Eichmann was a functionary for. And the way he presents himself to Morriss is so morally hollow and cold, so defensive and so aware of its own duplicity, that you really have to say that it is both banal/quotidian and truly horrific. The people Rumsfeld was involved in murdering are simply no more real to him than ants are to someone who steps on them. But like Cheney he realizes that when someone talks to him now he is engaged in a war for control of the discussion, the legacy, the crime. He isn’t interested in justifying his actions, or regretting them–he is interested in preventing judgment. The past doesn’t exist for him, his actions and their results have no meaning to him. Only his present and future status matter to him. A true narcissist and sociopath.

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