Rex Murphy’s alternate universe. Donald Rumsfeld version. Channels John Hinderaker.

Donald Rumsfeld recently wrote an autobiography Known and Unknown which has been generally panned as disingenuous and full of cowardly self-justifications for his sociopathic tenure as Secretary of Defense under Bush. His error-prone and artless conduct leading up to and during the Iraq invasion would be Onion-worthy had it not been for the tragic unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the millions of Iraqis displaced as refugees and a country’s infrastructure shot to shit.

Does Rumsfeld acknowledge the role he has played in the horror of his dishonest approach to the invasion of Iraq? You must be joking. Does he take responsibility for the tragedy of his incompetent decisions and the lies that supported them? Of course not. That would take self-awareness and responsibility for one’s actions.

Rumsfeld’s memoir is one big clean-up job, a brazen effort to shift blame to others — including President Bush — distort history, ignore the record or simply avoid discussing matters that cannot be airbrushed away. It is a travesty, and I think the rewrite job won’t wash.

The Iraq War is essential to the understanding of the Bush presidency and the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. In the book, Rumsfeld tries to push so much off on Bush. That is fair because Bush made the ultimate decisions. But the record shows that it was Rumsfeld stoking the Iraq fires — facts he has completely left out of his memoir.

That’s Bob Woodward’s take. Here’s Rex Murphy’s* (emphasis mine).

I’ve been reading Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, Known and Unknown, and a real treat it is. It isn’t often we get to view the distilled reflections of a man of high intelligence, deep patriotism and full maturity. The book reveals that the former U.S. defense secretary has a brave mind — by which I mean, in this context, a genuine openness to the possibilities of his being wrong. Rumsfeld tests his own biases as much as he tests those of others.

So, this is one of Canada’s shining examples of a political and human analyst? OK, put Rumsfeld aside in Murphy’s article. Let’s just concentrate on the writing. Here’s an article full of big words, complicated sentence and paragraph structure and lots and lots more of gobbledygook. He could have said what he wanted to say in a few words.

But one has to struggle to get to Murphy’s points like a receiver running back a punt. It’s hard work. It shouldn’t be. When one is trying to rescue the tattered remains of a scoundrel, one has to resort to obfuscation and misdirection. Works for the Conservatives. Why not Rex?

One can only assume Mr. Murphy sees a lot of Mr. Rumsfeld in himself. But this article isn’t about Rumsfeld. Read the whole thing. Murphy uses Rumsfeld merely as a tool. Behind all the scholarly bluster, Murphy has one simple goal: support one of Harper’s chief tenets that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. Despicable.

* The above quote from Murphy is probably my favourite right-wing funny since this award-winning gem from 2005′s Powerline:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Cross posted at Let Freedom Rain