O Globo, Brazil By William Waack
It's Not Rumsfeld, But Bush that Should Be Dismissed
“The resignation of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld pleases military leaders ... But the American generals are mistaken. Bush is the one who should have been fired.”

In regard to the bloody catastrophe in Iraq, the electoral defeat of Bush and the Republicans was a shout for change made manifest. It would be difficult to imagine a more sensational spectacle.

Beginning with Iraq: the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, above all pleases military leaders. To them, the "civilians" (that being Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative advisors) are responsible for a situation in which American combatants never lose a confrontation and never win the war. But the American generals are mistaken. Bush is the one who should have been fired, most of all for his political calculations - miscalculations that force the military to find a cure, as best that it can.

The new man in the Pentagon, Robert Gates, led the CIA during the time that Bush's father occupied the White House. He is part of the bipartisan commission led by James Baker III, another old friend of the President's father. Pragmatic and an adherent of another kind of Republican conservatism, Baker should present a new strategy for Iraq by January.

Strategic options that fall between "tolerable" and "horrible," were well summarized by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The U.S. can either stay on the sidelines while Iraqis kill one another until they end the ethnic cleansing on their own; or the U.S. can withdraw and leave neighboring countries (mainly Iran, Turkey and Syria) to sort the chaos in their respective areas of influence - with incalculable and unforeseeable consequences.

If in Iraq there appears little that will radically alter the situation, the same can be said in regard to America's relations with its allies. It is impossible to hide the Schadenfreude (that excellent German term meaning to take pleasure in the misfortune of others) of Europeans over Bush's defeat. After all, "Old Europe" as Rumsfeld used to characterize the reluctant allies to the American adventure, felt vindicated in its collective belief that the worst part of Washington's foreign policy was its ideological bias and distortion of the facts.

But even Europeans properly point to the dangerous paralysis that was already being felt before the electoral earthquake of last Tuesday (Nov. 7). The question of North Korea's bomb is in the hands of China; the Iranian nuclear program is now in European hands; and there is little hope for a toning down of the Israeli-Arab conflict. In Afghanistan, there are now NATO troops trying to achieve what the Americans couldn't. And Democrats have no new ideas to address these problems.

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