Unpleasant Truths
This Washington Post article on Rumsfeld’s “snowflake” memos has finger-wagging quality about it. The lede:
In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.
My, what a racist! I knew there was something wrong with that guy. He hates Muslims!
Much further down in the article:
He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims “from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed,” he wrote. “An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism.”
Does the Post really believe that Rumsfeld’s analysis is incorrect and/or beyond the pale? I’m certainly not reading this as some sort of categorical statement about Muslims qua Muslims. What he’s saying is a fact about the Middle East. It’s the oil curse, stupid!
I’m no Rumsfeld groupie, but let’s try to be fair, shall we?
My favorite part of the article:
“If radicals ‘get a hold of’ oil-rich Saudi Arabia, he added, the United States will have ‘an enormous national security problem.’ ”
Talk about a day late and a dollar short! They’ve already got a hold of Saudi Arabia:
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
And yes, 9/11 sure as hell was “an enormous national security problem.”
Eh… I think you’re cutting old Rummy too much slack. If he had said oil wealth had detached oil barons from the reality of work, that would be one thing. But saying “[t]oo often Muslims are against physical labor”—so much so that they would choose to remain unemployed (and, of course, idle minds are Osama’s workshop)—that’s more of a Lazy Brown Man stereotype than a “fact about the Middle East,” no?
My point is that it is a fact about the Middle East: oil wealth has detached Muslims from the reality of work. Maybe it’d be more correct to say “oil wealth has detached the people of the Middle East from the reality of work.” Overall it seems to me to be a trifling and unremarkable remark that the Post decided to blow up in its lede.