Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that critics of the war in Iraq and the campaign against terror groups “seem not to have learned history’s lessons,” and he alluded to those in the 1930’s who advocated appeasing Nazi Germany.
In a speech to thousands of veterans at the American Legion’s annual convention here, Mr. Rumsfeld sharpened his rebuttal of critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy, some of whom have called for phased withdrawal of United States forces or partitioning of the country.
Comparing terrorist groups to a “new type of fascism,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?”
It was the second unusually combative speech by Mr. Rumsfeld to a veterans group in two days and appeared to be part of a concerted administration effort to address criticism of the war’s conduct...
In many previous speeches, including some before groups of veterans for whom World War II is a sacred memory, he has compared the government of Saddam Hussein, and the violent resistance since it fell, to the Nazis, and warned explicitly against appeasement there or in the broader campaign against terrorism, comparing it to the error of appeasing Hitler.
While he did not directly compare current critics of the war in Iraq to those who sought to appease Hitler, his juxtaposition of the themes led Democrats to say that he was leveling an unfair charge...
Rumsfeld Says War Critics Ignore History
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