Rumsfeld interview Part 2:
Some of them are saying, "This is Rumsfeld's particular obsession," or whatever. Are you worried about European weakness or disagreement at this point? The tone has certainly changed.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Well. If one looks down from outer space on earth, you find a couple of handfuls of countries that are generally like thinking, and they tend to be in Western Europe and North America. They have freer political systems, and freer economic systems, and tend not to covet the land or property or lives of other nations.
So there's a natural affinity between our country, and your country, and our European allies. That being the case, one always would prefer that when you're engaged in something difficult, that the interests and goals and values would be shared by other like-thinking countries. And that tends to be the case.
It is not always the case, and it may not always be the case because one country is wrong. It may also not be the case because other countries are wrong. It may also be simply a matter of timing. Gosh. After living 70 years, I'm not surprised to find that there are people that differ on these questions. They differ among themselves, as well as between continents. And I no longer find it surprising.
I guess one other thing I've learned is that with leadership, if everyone waited until everyone agreed on everything before one did anything, there wouldn't be such a thing as leadership. And if people decide that something is important, and merits their effort and their thought and their treasure, allowing - you know, a simple way to say it is that the coalition ought really not to determine missions.
Missions determine coalitions. And one ought not to expect that every country in the world is going to agree with everything.
CHARLES MOORE: Right. But that has huge implications, doesn't it? Because the main coalition for so long has been Nato. And Nato, though it immediately invoked Article 5, fundamentally hasn't got a lot to do with what's going on now, has it?
DONALD RUMSFELD: There are more coalition troops in Afghanistan than there are Americans. I cited a minute ago that there are - there are twice as many ships in the waters south of Afghanistan than there were American ships. So I would think that - it's very easy to mischaracterize things.
And to say that countries in Europe don't agree, or are causing problems is, I think, only very partially true. I think there are individuals who are. There are elements of political parties that are.
What the people of Europe think, you probably know a lot more than I do, but I have the impression that there's just an awful lot of support for the coalition in Europe, among the populations, and it may very well be that the fact that newspapers and television and radio hype disagreement, and elevate out some politicians' words, and then the next day characterize it as "European opinion," as opposed to the whims or words of a single individual or a small faction, it seems to me, is a misunderstanding of the situation.
CHARLES MOORE: But there does seem to be quite an orthodoxy - I don't say it's everybody in the European elites - people who are saying things like "you're unilateralist," "you're too assertive," that the State of the Union "axis of evil" speech was just for internal consumption.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Let me come back to that Axis of Evil speech. When President Reagan said that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire, everyone got all a-twitter. All of the elites in the world. They thought, "Oh, my goodness gracious. Isn't that something. This president of the United States really doesn't get it, and he doesn't realise how important it is to have good relationships with Russia" and whoever happened to be the head of that time.
On the other hand, the people of Russia and the Russian republics, I think probably had a very different view of that. The people who'd been in the gulags. The people that weren't allowed to vote freely, and weren't allowed to practice their religion freely, and the people of neighbouring countries that were being repressed, and the people on neighbouring continents that felt that the Soviet Union was trying to expand its empire in their direction, they had quite a different view of it.
And that tended not to be carried in the press, or carried in the television of the world. Let's take North Korea. I've got to think of what's classified and what's not classified. But let's just, for the sake of argument, say there are tens and tens and tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of Koreans, political prisoners, in prison camps. Camps, more than a handful of camps, that are the size of cities. That are being starved.
Why are Korean people trying to get out of North Korea into China? It is a regime that is vicious. It's developing weapons of mass destruction. It is selling them all across the globe.
Now, if someone can come up with a better adjective than "evil," fine. But to turn your head and pretend that's not going on is wrong. And not only is it wrong, it is unhelpful if one cares at all about all those human beings.
If one cares at all about the risks that the world faces as we examine the nexus between countries like that and weapons of mass destruction and their relationship with other nations of the world that they're willing to sell to, or other terrorist networks that they're willing to sell to.
We're at a moment where we no longer have the margin for error we, as humanity, had decades ago, where our weapons were relatively short range, and where the warheads were relatively modest. Today, we're dealing with weapons of mass destruction, with generally free and open societies where the reach of those weapons was vastly greater than it was, the lethality of those weapons is vastly greater than it was.
And to sit back and say, "Oh, my goodness. He called those countries an Axis of Evil. Isn't that terrible." Well, exactly what is terrible about it? I think putting the microscope, the floodlight, on what is going on in those three countries is just enormously valuable for the world.
And it is constructive. It is enlightened. I don't doubt for a minute but that it's giving encouragement to those people. And I don't doubt for a minute - in fact, I know of certain knowledge - that it's giving pause to those governments.
CHARLES MOORE: And it's giving irritation to you that people who say they are allies won't agree.
DONALD RUMSFELD: I didn't say that. [Laughter] I'm not irritated at all. I'm in here on a Saturday morning. Sometimes I get a little energy in my voice is all, but no. I'm not irritated.
SIR JOHN KEEGAN: Would it help, do you think, to call North Korea "weakly evil"? I mean, because I always think one shove, and that thing would fall over.
DONALD RUMSFELD: [sarcastically] But we must not shove. We must not shove. [Laughter]. [Pointing at Charles Moore] Don't just write that as though I meant it.
You're not wrong. That is a weak regime. It is a terrible regime. It is not so weak that it falls after decade after decade. It remains. It is not so weak, and so starved, and so absent of hard currency that it can't develop nuclear weapons, and chemical and biological weapons.
It's not so weak and starved and pitiful that it can't sell those weapons across the globe. And for you to suggest that because it's starving, the country is starving, and because the government is unsophisticated, and a peanut compared to South Korea's vitality and energy and economic dynamism and military power, the fact is they are making those weapons, and they are selling those weapons, and if they stick a biological weapon in downtown London, you will not say, "My goodness. Aren't they weak."
SIR JOHN KEEGAN: Yes. I just like to soften up public opinion a bit, though, and say, if you call them weakly evil, you're preparing Western public opinion for the sort of shove that will knock the beastly thing over. [Laughter]
DAVID WASTELL: Can I ask you one last thing about our prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. I say "ours," because we have five British there, as you know. What are the prospects for them?
DONALD RUMSFELD: Have you been down there?
DAVID WASTELL: I have not. My colleague has been been.
DONALD RUMSFELD: [pointing at Toby Harnden] You were down there?
TOBY HARNDEN: Yes.
DONALD RUMSFELD: What did you think of how they were being treated?
TOBY HARNDEN: Pretty well.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Pretty well. Would you do it better?
TOBY HARNDEN: Given that they're terrorist suspects who could possess information that could be useful to the US and its allies, no. I don't think so. I think they're being treated in the right way.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Good. It's good to hear someone say that.
DAVID WASTELL: I'm curious as to if we have any sense of how long they're likely to be held, or do we know when the military tribunals, if there are going to be such things, will be constituted?
DONALD RUMSFELD: A short answer is that the President has issued the military order of allowing commissions to be held. He has retained the authority to assign to the commissions the individuals who might be tried by the commissions, and he has assigned no one yet.
We have fashioned a set of preliminary rules that we're now circulating for discussion as to how they might be conducted. When the President will decide to assign someone to be tried by a commission, I do not know.
CHARLES MOORE: They could have capital punishment, could they?
DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, sure. Second. The detainees. My goal is to have as few of them as is humanly possible. We are taking only those that we believe there is a prospect of gathering intelligence from that can save people's lives, and we have been successful.
We are gaining a good deal of intelligence information that is enabling us to weave a fabric as to how this al-Qa'eda functions, where it functions, who's involved, how it's financed, and along with the support of dozens of countries, arresting people and interrogating them, and closing bank accounts.
The totality of that body of knowledge is growing every day. When we have gotten out of them the information that we feel is appropriate, and possible, very likely we'll let countries, as many countries as possible, have any of their nationals they would like, and they can handle the law enforcement prosecution.
I have no desire to fill up our jails and spend time and money holding people. We have let a great many people loose who seemed either to not have been appropriately detained in the first place, or whom we have looked at, but the Afghans and the Pakistanis, particularly, have held, and decided we didn't need or want.
If we do transfer people back to the countries of their national origin, needless to say, we'd be interested in finding out what additional intelligence those countries might find.
'I've always enjoyed life, no matter what I'm doing'
But conceivably, if connections are later developed, having a chance to go back and interrogate those same people - and we prefer to only give them back to countries that have an interest in prosecuting people that ought to be prosecuted, rather than simply turning them loose, putting them back out on the street, and having them go get into more airplanes and fly into the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre.
We're really out of time. I'm afraid we really are out of time. Thank you.
CHARLES MOORE: This was tremendous.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Nice to see you.
CHARLES MOORE: Thank you.
TOBY HARNDEN: Good to see you, Mr Secretary.
ABBIE TRAYLER-SMITH: Mr Secretary, could I just do a quick picture with you and the gentlemen together?
DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, terrific. I'd be proud to. Let me put my papers down. Don't take my breeches because I've got my old cords on today. Of course, you all are from Europe, so you get to look fine.
ABBIE TRAYLER-SMITH: I have to say you're one of the most exciting people I've photographed. I've got some great shots.
DONALD RUMSFELD: Thank you. Thank you. Good.
CHARLES MOORE: You're quite enjoying this, aren't you?
DONALD RUMSFELD: I'm finding it very interesting and important to do. And I've always enjoyed life, no matter what I'm doing. I like people and I like ideas, and I've got a lot of energy, fortunately.
CHARLES MOORE: It's visible.
TOBY HARNDEN: How is world stardom treating you?
DONALD RUMSFELD: Oh, gosh. You know, I don't ever think about it. It's so funny. Guys walk up to me and say, "I've got to have my picture with you." And I say, "Why?" And they say, "Well, because my 98-year-old grandmother is in a nursing home in Louisville and she thinks you're wonderful."
We've got a thing called the AARP, the association for old people. That's what they say is my audience. |
