Surrounded by mealy-mouthed bureaucrats who wrap their answers in politically correct diplomese-speak, Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage has always seemed out of place at the State Department. The burly veteran has done his time in the trenches – the Naval Academy, Vietnam, the Pentagon – and has never been afraid to speak his mind (defending Powell to a Washington Post reporter, he asked, “"Frank Gaffney, Gary Bauer, these pissants who have never served in uniform—who would you rather have represent the nation, them or Colin Powell?"). He may work for Powell but he talks like Rumsfeld.
The Deputy Secretary, who Jack Shafer refers to as “a Powell loyalist with a mouth (and body) to rival that of "Macho Man" Randy Savage”, recently let loose in a question and answer session with a group of pan-Arab print reporters:
QUESTION: -- about human rights in Iraq. There have been civilian casualties, women and children, in Fallujah. How can you promote democracy in the Middle East when you're sending out a message that it's okay to shoot at children and –
DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Oh, stop. Stop. Shame on you. I hope you were screaming about human rights during the time of Saddam Hussein. I didn't hear many in the region.
We are the most humane military in the world. We punish our people when they exceed bounds, and we do it transparently. We regret every single civilian life which is lost, and we do our utmost, even putting our soldiers at risk, to prevent those.
It is true that there are civilian casualties and it is true that these scenes are shown over and over, particularly on our Arab friends' television networks. Now we spend enormous amounts of time and put our soldiers and Marines at risk in order to try to prevent it.
War is dangerous and it is difficult times, but when you ask that question, I would hope that you'd reflect on your own writing over the past, say, 30 years and see what you've said about human rights in Iraq.
An excellent answer and one that was long overdue. We could use more people in government like him who aren’t afraid to speak the truth. Though it would be a step down for him, he should be appointed as the White House press secretary. Seeing Armitage taking on the Washington Press corps would be like watching WrestleMania on C-Span.
(Hat tip: Ben Domenech)
Armitage's attitudes are understandable, given the fact that he is the person in the Bush administration most deeply enmeshed in Vietnam. He was one of those people who got out about the time that helicopter was taking off from the American Embassy.
That said, this man was special forces counterinsurgency. What Kerry described with horror, this guy basically did as his job. Wouldn't go so far as to call him a war criminal, but this guy was hip deep in the world in which those things occurred, and he may very well have believed those means necessary. Won't condemn the man, as I do not know what he did and did not do well enough, but I do know the information above from Rise of the Vulcans, by James Mann. Well-Balanced book, provides some surprising insights into who Bush's war Cabinet are.
Well anyways, he may take that same view here.
That said, I do not think it's a wise course. I'm the last person to say that hearts and minds should win over military discretion. I think that few friends are made at the end of a gun -barrell. However, we are best off when the populace of the countries we intervene in assume that the people who see the business end of our weapons have done something to deserve it.
We do no good trying to offset ourselves from these deeds by saying Saddam was worse, because it's not an argument many people will buy in that country, especially not from mostly Christian foreigners.
We need to go the extra mile out there, because how our soldiers act reflects on us all, and given the state of today's media, we may never become as familiar with our own misdeeds as others in those regions do.