Henry Kissinger Is Right There, But We'll Take It: Donald Rumsfeld Edition
It's not Kissinger, but it'll do.
Donald Rumsfeld, one of the key architects and lead salespeople for the Iraq War, died today at the ripe old age of 88, surrounded by people who ostensibly cared for him, in Taos, New Mexico, roughly 7,240 miles from the country that he bombed, desecrated and ransacked for the better part of a decade. He was outlived by his family, who I don't particularly care about, and by his chief rival in villainy Henry Kissinger, who I care about only insofar as I wish the two of them a speedy reunion.
His family released the following statement:
History will remember Rumsfeld's so-called accomplishments, the foremost of which, again, is the Iraq War. Rumsfeld, in his second stint as secretary of defense, pushed the narrative that Iraq had an active WMD program both before and after the war, while his office produced falsified reports to play up a link between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda. Rumsfeld's sins are well-documented. We do not need to list them all here. He was a terrible, malevolent force in international politics and directly responsible for thousands if not millions of deaths. If a world after this one exists, tied to our lives only through a utilitarian notion of karmic justice, Rumsfeld may be experiencing a shred of the pain and loss that he caused. But this is, in his words, an unknown unknown. Donald Rumsfeld is dead, and all that we can do now is hope that he is in a place worse than the fractured, broken hell he created for many people still suffering today.