Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is filled with regret that he hasn’t posted more of late. Those of you who have come to rely on your Maximum Leader’s sensible and thoughtful conservative opinions must be going through horrible DTs. Especially since the Smallholder appears to have gone all squishy on the war, and appears to have fallen from the light and decided to vote for Kerry. Your Maximum Leader even got an e-mail from a minion who said that they wondered if your Maximum Leader has let his site devolve into mindless liberal rantings…

Well, let your Maximum Leader say that he values the opinions of all of his ministers. And he invited them all to participate in his forum because he knows that open honest discussion is the lifeblood of our republic. And while open and honest discussion will be severely curtailed in the MWO, it is what is best for our country now, and at any time.

In the spirit of open and honest debate, allow your Maximum Leader to take a side in the current debate concerning the prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib (and likely other prisons) in Iraq. Your Maximum Leader, like most reasonable Americans, is horrified to learn about what has gone on in these prisons at the hands of Americans. He believes that the prisoner abuse is, as so many others have said, disgusting. It is a serious setback to our efforts in Iraq. So serious that in order to deal with it, President Bush must take serious action to deal with it. (Action that seems, regrettably, less and less likely.)

Your Maximum Leader, in a telephone discussion with the Minister of Agriculture the other evening, expressed his belief that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers should resign for his failure to act more decisively as investigations of prisoner abuse began to show the extent of this problem. Further, your Maximum Leader also said that the Chief of Staff of the Army Peter Schoomaker should go. But at the time, your Maximum Leader didn’t believe that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should be asked to resign. Now, your Maximum Leader has come around to the view that Rumsfeld should go to.

Many have opined that letting Rumsfeld go would be a serious blow to the military in a time when the military doesn’t need further disruption. (And if your Maximum Leader’s belief that Myers and Schoomaker go too that would be, supposedly, an even larger disruption.) Your Maximum Leader believes this argument to be false. There is a Deputy Secretary of Defense. There are ther senior generals. These men are ready to step up. The time has come for them to step up. Your Maximum Leader cannot believe that Donald Rumsfeld is the only man in America up to the job of being Secretary of Defense. (Surely Paul Wolfowitz is. He is the most visible Deputy Secretary of Defense in memory.)

President Bush should, but is unlikely to, cashier these three men for their failure to follow-on more deliberately as prisoner abuse allegations became substantiated. Furthermore, the soldiers who committed the abuse should be jailed. As should their officers all the way up to General Karpinski.

It is sad that the President will not act decisively in this way. Your Maximum Leader believes that it would go a long way towards putting deeds behind all of the mournful statements of regret and the apologies. And might go far to restore faith in the American mission in Iraq among moderate Arabs (if such a beast exist outside the US).

Having said this, do not believe for a moment that your Maximum Leader has changed his mind about the war or our presence in Iraq. He has not. But he recognizes that the recent events have made our mission that much more difficult. He firmly believes that the US is the only nation that has even an outside chance of reshaping Iraq into a moderate democracy. The UN cannot, and in your Maximum Leader’s opinion, will not be able to do anything in Iraq except allow the country to devolve into civil war moderated by ineffective UN Peacekeepers (who would likely consist of the exact same troops who are currently in Iraq - only under untenable UN rules of engagement).

Your Maximum Leader is afraid that his elected leaders will lose the will to continue in Iraq. And that soon after, the citizens of our nation will demand that our troops be recalled. That is, in your Maximum Leader’s opinion, the worst possible outcome for the US. The removal of US troops might result in Iraq becoming a little Iran. Or possibly a little Iran and a little Sunni state and a little Kurdish state. But strategically, it would be an emboldening event for the Islamofacists who are the heart of matter.

There are many who are firmly committed to the idea that Iraq is a distraction in the war on terror. Your Maximum Leader is not one of them. Iraq is another front in that war. A very daring front at that. While the good Minister of Propaganda may scoff at “neo-conservative” plans for the remaking of the middle east (and perhaps history will be on the M of P’s side in this), your Maximum Leader doesn’t see that another viable option existed for the dramatic change needed to break the cycle that is at the root of Islamofacism. All of the diplomacy, and talk, and nice-making that has gone on to different degrees and with different tactic since the 1960’s hasn’t gotten anyone anywhere. Over the decades the Islamofacists have grown in strength and influence that negotiations are no longer possible. They are not possible because in the end you cannot negotiate with a religious fanatic. The only thing to which these religious fanatics respond is force. Alas, after so long the only thing that can break the cycle is a forceful and decisive blow. Whether or not we have dealt that blow remains the open question.

Carry on.