An FYI - I'll be representing the libertarian viewpoint on The Iron Blog over the next few weeks.   My "position post" -

In contrast to the Churchill adage that the young start out as liberals and become conservatives later, Vinod's political awareness started deeply in Libertarian land and has only recently softened into a softer "Classical Liberalism" - see Am I Libertarian? for an example. Vs. Liberals & Greens, he is more apt to recognize Governance failures than market ones and the Tragic view of human nature rather than the Utopian one. Vs. Social Conservatives, he is more apt to recognize the modern primacy of economics and market participation as the unifying basis of culture rather than religion and convention.

Iron Blog is inspired by TV's wacky Iron Chef and "The Chairman" promises to do his best to to stir up constructive, focused debate on particular topics and illuminate revealing differences between the panelists.   The first challenge concerning Don Rumsfeld has been floated up by a challenger to the Republican Blogger.

The Republican Blogger starts -

Should Rumsfeld resign? Should Bush fire him? Should we just put him on a pyre and BURN HIM? Let's evaluate the situation, shall we?

We are dealing with a situation that the Defense Department mentioned back in January. They announced, on January 16, 2004, that they had accusations of abuse occuring and that they were investigating the matter.

The Challenger opens -

Whether or not Donald Rumsfeld leaves the Cabinet is almost beside the point now. This is because the whole Abu Ghraib affair has gone past that tipping point so typical in Bush Administration scandal dynamics. You know, that point where things have become so totally partisan and so totally stalemated that no one is even listening to each other anymore.

That's too bad because we need to discuss the real issue at hand: how the tenure of Don Rumsfeld brought the US to the brink of defeat in Iraq and what needs to be done about it.

Well, there's certainly going to be a LOT of meat as well as fat to wade through over the next few days so it should be interesting to see how this dialectic unfolds.   My position on Rumsfeld?   I just don't know and really can be persuaded.   Overall, I think he's done a Good Job and (to paraphrase Nixon) while I don't blame him for the prisoner abuse Scandalo Tortura, I do recognize that he has ultimate responsibility as the civilian leader of the DoD.  Let me be clear - I like him, I think he's a GREAT Sec/Defense, he's one of my favorite members of the Bush cabinet, and I do NOT think he's the direct cause of the abuse.   As the now famous General Taguba noted in this morning's Congressional hearing, the issue here is more likely "one of character" on the part of the MPs rather than "one of training or policy".  (now of course, in hindsight, there are "leadership" and "training" solutions that could have caught this and probably will be instituted to catch it in the future...)

Regardless of the causality, the abuse *really* has had a significant impact on the political front of our war effort.   Consequently, I do think that the cruel winds of fate may nevertheless indicate that we are best served if he takes a bullet for the team regardless of his own fault.   The whims of humanity occasionally create situations where symbolism is more important than the legal substance and this may be one of them.

So, I guess it's my luxury as neither Republican nor Democrat to be swayed by them  ;-). 

As the libertarian Blogger, I haven't received my formal "challenge" yet from the Chairman but I am quite interested to see what kind of stuff gets stirred up.   In general, I'm curious to see how my challenge will differ (if any) from the Republican one - it's rare, for ex., for others to seriously challenge the libertarian position on relatively prosaic, domestic issues like Rent Control, for example.  Okay, maybe the Green Iron Blogger may still believe in it.   And quite a few of the younger Republicans don't really differ much from Libertarians in support of Gays, immigration, fierce condemnation of racism, and so on. 

And, just to further complicate things, there are important subjects where I break from the Libertarian Party line (Iraq and WoT for example).  Consequently, much of the clash that's likely to surface on Iron Blog will be foreign policy where the Green + Democrat will form one front vs. myself and the Republican.  We'll see.

---