In Defense of Rumsfeld-Bashing?

I’ve been critical of Rumsfeld-bashing as an approach to conducting progressive national security policy several times recently. Always, several people pipe up to say I don’t get it — this is a political gambit and, they think, a good one. That didn’t seem very compelling to me because it didn’t strike me as a very good gambit; it seemed to me to actually shield Bush and congressional Republicans from responsibility for their actions. But if the GOP leadership is blocking votes on the Democrats’ stunt, then maybe it’s a good stunt after all.

The other possibility would be that both parties’ leaders are making a mistake. Certainly, that’s possible. But I’m not super-confident pitting my sense of this against the judgment of the hacks working for both teams, so if everyone thinks it’s a good gambit it probably is. Still, on the merits I feel this lets way too many people off the hook way too easily.