No secretary of defense could have done a more catastrophically destructive job than Rummy, but that doesn't mean that he's "the" problem

Much as I'm enjoying the spectacle of "Dainty Donny" Rumsfeld taking some heat for his catastrophic tenure as secretary of defense (and "catastrophic" is the kindest description I can think of for his reign at the Pentagon), I've also been uneasy about the implicit suggestion that he is "the problem." Thank goodness our First Chimp isn't the firing sort, at least when firing would hint at his own malevolence and incompetence, because there seems to be a mood in the air that if only Rummy was shitcanned, everything would be peaches.

E. J. Dionne Jr. seems to me to have gotten the point exactly right, and staked out an interesting position regarding the revolt of the generals, in his WashPost column today.

"For all his mistakes," Dionne writes, "Rumsfeld is not some alien creature operating as a loner sabotaging the otherwise reasonable policies of his bosses." And he has smart things to say on behalf of the generals under attack by the predictably hypocritical wingnut noise machine. The piece is well worth a read.