Rumsfeld's Remarks

As promised, here are some poignant remarks from this morning's Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.

One final point. Someone recently asked me about the differences between my current tenure as Secretary of Defense and my previous tenure some thirty years ago. One thing that has remained the same is the tendency in some quarters to blame America for the world's troubles.

Well, I'm not one who wakes up every morning seeking ways to suggest that America is what's wrong with the world. The people who are going on television chopping off people's heads or using disabled children as suicide bombers - they are what's wrong with the world. The violent extremists that killed three thousand innocent men, women, and children on September eleventh are what's wrong with the world.
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

There will always be people around the world who blame America for everything. A lake in Russia disappeared a few weeks ago, and there were people in the village who suspected an American conspiracy to drain their lake. It's going to happen.

The people of the world don't hate the United States, and any American citizen who claims to be a patriot while still blaming Americans for all the ills of the world is intellectually dishonest, and probably completely ignorant to boot. Don't believe them, and don't agree with them, because they're wrong.

I have seen too much of the rest of the world... And it's brutal and cruel and dark. I have to believe that America is the light.
- Russell Crowe, "Gladiator" (2000) (paraphrased)

An appropriate paraphrase, don't you think?