Rumsfeld: Critics ignore history

Calls anti-war views appeasement

SALT LAKE CITY -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush administration to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II, warning Tuesday that the United States is confronting "a new type of fascism."

His comment echoed President Bush's remarks this month that the nation "is at war with Islamic fascists." The declaration followed Britain's arrest of two dozen people suspected in a plot to blow up U.S.-bound passenger jets.

Rumsfeld, speaking before the American Legion convention, delivered some of his most explicit and extended attacks yet on the administration's critics, provoking criticism from Democrats who accused him of "campaigning on fear."

By comparing U.S. foreign policy with World War II and the Cold War, Rumsfeld sought to portray skeptics of the Bush's foreign policy as being on the wrong side of history. Rumsfeld again ridiculed U.S. officials who, before World War II, wished to negotiate with Adolf Hitler.

"I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," Rumsfeld said. "But some seem not to have learned history's lessons."

He continued: "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?"

His use of the word "appease" clearly ties administration critics to the failed efforts of the pre-Churchill British government to mollify Hitler.

Rumsfeld has become one of the Bush administration's most divisive figures, and demands for his resignation have become a theme in congressional races around the country as Iraq confronts deepening violence and civil strife.

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld defended the war and his leadership of it in speeches to the American Legion on Tuesday, the Veterans of Foreign Wars a day earlier and in other meetings with service members.

In each speech, Rumsfeld has acknowledged the reality of debate in a free society. But he has attacked the news media, charging that reports have been manipulated by Iraqi insurgents or al-Qaeda terrorists.

"The struggle we are in is too important -- the consequences too severe -- to have the luxury of returning to the 'blame America first' mentality," Rumsfeld told the American Legion. "Can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America -- not the enemy -- is the real source of the world's troubles?"

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a speech to the same Legion convention later Tuesday, took a softer tone.

"On the one hand, Americans want desperately to succeed in Iraq. They want to do whatever it takes to achieve victory," Rice said. "But on the other hand, there are unsettling questions. Is success possible? Is it really worth the effort?"

Rice said she believed the American strategy in Iraq was working, and that the U.S. military must remain in the country or risk handing a victory to extremists.

Rumsfeld's speech drew a sharp complaint from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was criticized by Rumsfeld on Monday. The elder Kennedy, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Great Britain before World War II, resigned that post because he opposed British and U.S. war preparations.

"Secretary Rumsfeld is the last person who should preach the lessons of history after ignoring them for the last six years," Kennedy said in a statement. "As a result of his failures, Americans are less safe."