In an essay published in yesterday's Financial Times, Donald Rumsfeld, whom we might begin to distrust after two grossly wrongheaded endorsements in bad intelligence gathering (Team B in the 1970s and assessments of Iraq's weaponry more recently), declared it "essential that we take care in understanding what motivates -- and does not motivate -- extremists to commit mass murder." I certainly think this statement unassailable. But Rumsfeld does not make any attempt to understand what motivates terrorists in his essay. Instead he simply assails the "empty justifications" that terrorists give for their actions.
We need better than this.
The essay, entitled "There can be no moderate solutions to extremism," amounts to an apology for the use of violence to counter violence and offers reassuring statements such as "[The extremists] failed on September 11. They are failing in Iraq and Afghanistan." By what measure does the secretary of defense assess failure?
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