By: Mary Lyon

Mr. Secretary, take a letter. Please. From me. My letter would be small, pink, and two words long – in a “From Donald to Donald” sense. After all, what are the two words Donald Trump is best known for, by now? Yep. “You’re fired.” Hey, look, ma! Leadership! I’m being presidential!

Come to think of it, that might be the way to go. Another one of the “little guys” speaking up, like a mouse that roared, or the little kid along the parade route who blurts out the truth about the naked emperor. Or, perhaps, like those Iraq-bound soldiers asking too many uncomfortable and unignorable questions of Rumsfeld at the town hall meeting in Kuwait. They were little guys, going straight to the top, too (when they weren’t busy scrounging through local landfills for scrap metal to prep their own Humvees for roadside bombs, that is). Maybe that’s what’s really needed here, to get something done, effectively: the voice of the little guy. Because I would dearly love to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Kick his bloated behind straight out of the Pentagon into the street, with no severance pay, no “golden parachute” like the ones saved for CEOs, and no, Rummy, you can’t take that rolodex with you, either – it’s the people’s property. Some 55-or-so million of us tried to roar that loudly about a month and a half ago, give or take a few fraudulent vote counts (or counters). I suspect more than a few others by now, even in the red states, regret that they didn’t join us.

I would love to fire Donald Rumsfeld. I even thought of asking Santa for it. I’d love to send him out in one of those unreinforced Humvees that he sees fit to furnish our National Guard troops and Reservists in Iraq. Since they’re not regular Army, of course, they get the dregs. He’s already admitted as much. Since he can’t possibly know how bad, dangerous, or scary it is to face that, maybe he should try it for himself. After all, like so many others cruising along on the SS Chickenhawk, the poor dear has never had combat experience. Perhaps if he could see firsthand how the grunts have to live, he’d consider this a little higher-priority than preparing for his next photo-op. At least he’d be able to make an informed decision for a change.

Of course, knowing me, I’d like to issue pink slips much higher up the food chain. On the way to the White House (with an armload of them), I’d stop by the office of that shameful, over-inflated bellhop, General Richard Myers, and bestow one upon him. I have a nice new job to outsource him into, and it even involves wearing a uniform. When they remake “Animal House,” he could take the Kevin Bacon role in that scene where the parade disintegrates into complete chaos. Bacon played the hapless ROTC crowd-control kid in a losing struggle against an avalanche of stampeding college rowdies, while waving his arms furtively and crying out “Remain calm! All is WELL!”

Myers, our “valiant” American media, and all those other sad sacks who’ve allowed the lunatics to overrun the asylum, and especially Rumsfeld, should all be taken to the woodshed, at the very least. But it’s Rumsfeld whom I choose to kick around in this column. Regretfully, that’s as good as it gets for me. I can’t fire him, for real, much as I yearn to. Rumsfeld has no excuse. While he and his pals safely ensconced far away in the Pentagon are intoning about how they’ve “broken the backs of the insurgency” in Iraq since Fallujah was flattened, that same “broken-backed” insurgency continues to kick the living daylights out of our troops day after day after day. In fact, our intrepid media is now actually beginning to report that the insurgents seem to be getting stronger every day. Some broken back, ‘eh? It’s getting WORSE in Iraq. Not better.

Rumsfeld should be ashamed of himself. No wonder he had a machine signing all those condolence letters for him. Somebody as big a VIP as he is shouldn’t have to bother with such trivia. Since we have a president who can’t be bothered to attend any fallen soldiers’ funerals, why should his defense secretary have to sign his own sympathy cards? Heaven forbid either one of them would have to work for a living.

I would passionately love to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Dear George, if it’s too hard a job for you, kindly step aside and let me take care of it. I’m ready NOW. Me! Me! Over HERE! Please! For the grossest of gross dereliction of duty. Rumsfeld deserves the ultimate dishonorable discharge for his arrogance, and the insulation that prompted such unsatisfactory answers to those troops, and the refusal to listen to the Shinsekis around him who warned (because their own hard-won wartime experience had taught them) that it would take far more troops and materiel to win the war AND the peace in Iraq. Among other reasons. To quote another “Animal House” alum, the late John Belushi, “But NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Rummy knew better. He and everybody else from Adelman to Wolfowitz carried on about the “cakewalk” it was going to be in Iraq. All we need to be is lean and mean. Do it on the cheap, in the best traditions of the captains of industry who cut back their workforces to save money and then award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses.

All those grunts’ lives are cheap, too, aren’t they? If you’ll recall, Rumsfeld is actually doing a good job keeping in character in this time of year when we traditionally haul out our old friend Ebenezer Scrooge. Rummy, after all, is the one who declared the men and women of our front-line forces mere “fungible” commodities, and talked about how draftees brought “nothing of value” to the military. Easy for him to say. They’re just numbers on a daily combat casualties report. Easy for him to pose in front of serious hardware during that town hall meeting with the troops, while those in his audience were probably wishing that’s what they had at their own disposal. I guess if Bush himself could pose with a huge platter overloaded with a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving turkey dinner (the banquet feast that the soldiers in that Baghdad mess hall were NOT served, a few minutes later), Rumsfeld could stand in front of some Humvees that truly were fully-equipped for guerrilla fighting. Funny how conservatives badmouth Hollywood all the time. They sure don’t hesitate to strut the fancy stagecraft, themselves, when it suits them.

I would ardently love to fire Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. “You go with the Army you have, not with the Army you wish to have” had plenty of time to gear up. If the Paul O’Neills of the world are to be believed, this bunch, Rumsfeld included, came into office in early 2001 already spoiling for a fight in Iraq. Since they launched their precious war in early 2003, they had plenty of time between Bush’s inauguration and the beginning of “Shock and Awe” to get ready. They had plenty of time to plan. They had plenty of time to get everyone properly dressed. They had plenty of time to get everyone properly packed. They had plenty of time to stock up. They had plenty of time to appropriate the money for it – especially with the force with which they rammed their aggression authorizations down Congress’s throats in the wake of September 11th. They certainly had enough time to poo-poo, sideline, and override all the Cassandras who urged them to go slow, and build WAY up. There’s just no excuse.

There’s no excuse for this to be reported in earnest by the media, only now. Better late than never, I guess. Unfortunately, much of this was pretty obvious long before the November election. But our reporters, anchors, and pundits were far busier obsessing on the trashing of Howard Dean, John Kerry, and the Democrats in general than the ongoing pleadings by troops in the field – to their families back home – to send them flak jackets and other equipment they knew they wouldn’t get from their supply sergeants. It took that town hall meeting with those troops for them to wake up.

It’s a bittersweet Christmas present that many of us anti-war activists and liberals find in our Christmas stockings along with the lump of fake coal from the GOP (heaven forbid they’d offer something that the average American could actually use on another rcold winter night). Only now, this late in the game, and long after it might have actually made a difference for the good, are our newspeople beginning to speak of the real mess in Iraq. Only now are they starting, even still timidly, to mention how much worse things are becoming in Iraq. How the insurgency is expanding and flourishing, NOT in any way nursing a broken back. How more incursions are being made by snipers and suicide bombers into unexpected areas (like US troop mess halls in Mosul). And how, while our soldiers continue to be killed and maimed day after day, some newly up-armored Humvees won’t be out of the factory and on their way to the front for months.

The media is starting to notice what the American public has started to notice. That Rumsfeld should be fired. That the Iraq war is being disgracefully mismanaged by him, AND by his boss, Bush. Even Bush himself is being denied the post-election “honeymoon” so many of his panderers and handlers were so eager for him to enjoy. That’s because people are waking up. Maybe buyer’s remorse is setting in here, just in time for Christmas present returns. The questions of those troops in Kuwait at that town hall meeting, finally, could not be ignored. The death toll, ever mounting, cannot be ignored. The botch-job of this war cannot be ignored. The mess in Iraq – that ‘s growing worse, not better, cannot be ignored. The mushrooming insurgency cannot be ignored. Rumsfeld’s rotten job performance cannot be ignored. And as for those elections that are supposed to happen at the end of January in Iraq, when the flower of imported American democracy will officially sprout – yeah, sure. The same people who are assuring us that will happen successfully are those who also exhorted us that all is well and the insurgents’ backs are broken.

The new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll is out and the numbers aren’t good. The TV spinmeisters are now admitting to a growing chorus of voices inside and outside the Beltway for Rumsfeld to be fired. And even a few of them are publicly voicing the problem for Bush now. He CAN’T fire Rumsfeld. If he does, as some pundits have conceded, that’s an admission that he blew it, too. Gasp! That he made a mistake. Either way, because of this increasing public upset, Rummy has Georgie painted into a corner. Which will only make things worse for him in the new year.

So, George, Santa, Anybody, let me do it. Please let me fire Donald Rumsfeld. I’ll even take a number and stand in line, since there are more and more people every day calling for his ouster. It’s almost New Year’s Eve, anyway. Out with the old, ‘eh? It’s high time Rummy got some well-earned coal in his own stocking, for a change.

Mary Lyon spent the first 25 years of her adult life as a broadcast journalist, at Los Angeles radio stations KRTH-FM, KFWB-AM, KHJ-AM and KLOS-FM, the NBC, ABC, and RKO Radio Networks, plus KTLA-TV. She retired from day-to-day broadcasting in 1996, after covering Hollywood for nine years in radio, TV, and print, for the Associated Press. She wrote and illustrated "The Frazzled Working Woman's Practical Guide to Motherhood," and is presently at work on a new craft book for kids and friends. A lifelong Democrat who began her political involvement in the Student Coalition for Humphrey-Muskie, and Tom Bradley's first L.A. Mayoral campaign, Mary currently is a weekly columnist for www.debateusa.com - from the Left.