Op-Ed: MSNBC Report May Be One of the Strongest Statements About Current U.S. Administration

Keith Olbermann's scathing assessmnent of a speech Donald Rumsfeld gave to veterans pulls no punches and cuts no corners as it lays into the spirit of an administration.

Donald Rumsfeld

(SALEM) - Many free thinking Americans have grown increasingly frustrated with the national media in recent years, as the Bush administration has pushed forward with its military/business venture campaigns around the world. For many, Keith Olbermann restored some degree of faith this week, when he let both barrels fly on MSNBC, comparing the actions of Rumsfeld and Bush to those of England's political leader Neville Chamberlain of the 1930's. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12131617/ The bottom line is that Chamberlain laid into his critics at the time, principally Winston Churchill, who said Europe was allowing Hitler to build a war machine in Germany. The 1918 Treaty of Versailles charged Britain and France with watching over their neighbors to the east, to make sure their war machine didn't roar back to life. At this, history teaches us that they failed miserably. Maybe Olbermann is trying to keep the lesson this time to a minimum. One of the big problems is that news used to be more honorable. Now it is all up to selection and interpretation. Groups like FOX news continue to report half-truths and outward lies about GOP agenda items and right-wing Americans still flock to those sources that are sure to color and flavor the news to taste before delivery. Bill O'Really takes it a step further, blaming WWII Americans for a crime that the Nazi's committed, and never having the courage or the class to properly apologize. The truth is that many of us who are progressive or moderate in our politics know far more about military history than the average conservative. We spend time learning about these things. Some of us travel to Europe to study American history. So you're out of luck Mr. O'Really, and your politics mean squat when compared to real patriotism. In fact, I read in a poll the other day that an alarmingly high amount of FOX news watchers still believe Iraq was connected to attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Then I learn this weekend that the documentary "911 Loose Change" video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7218920724339766288&q=loose+change+911&hl=en which portrays 9/11 as an inside job has become one of the most watched programs on Google Video. I don't know where all of this is going exactly, Rumsfeld's power is still not substantially threatened and as the Iraq death count jumps, supporters of the current administration go on believing. Right-wing Web sites are openly attacking Olbermann. It is easy, as long as you just used the words "liberal" and "bad" often enough. But people are taking notice, and now the national media has finally spoken out. Thanks for joining in the struggle MSNBC, it is your job to speak out and call things for what they are. Our brave troops go on dying in the name of freedom and a careful consideration of the track record of the whole lot; Bush Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, may indicate that freedom is the last thing they are about. It is an established fact that fear that is their main tool. History shows us that they use it freely and they use it often. Scaring people, making them feel threatened, making them turn against their neighbors who speak out against war, it is a strange fight in the name of the red white and blue, and it may best be called a tactic of cowards. But again, more and more people are waking up and it is remarkable that an element of the national media would lay it down so eloquently, better late than never. Here is Olberman's delivery from MSNBC; one unabashed look at the country's current situation ... The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet. Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American. For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve. Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq. It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong. In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless. That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality. That government was England’s, in the 1930’s. It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England. It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords. It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed. The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth. Most relevant of all — it “knew” that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused. That critic’s name was Winston Churchill. Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill. History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts. Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy. Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards. His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain. But back to today’s Omniscient ones. That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And, as such, all voices count -- not just his. Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego. But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically. And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes? In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America? The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too. The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought. And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.” As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed. Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: “confused” or “immoral.” Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full: “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.” And so good night, and good luck.