Victor Davis Hanson says we’re doing to ourselves what the enemy cannot: American Cannibalism.

Have we any memory of a man in a suit and tie, nearly three years ago wading through the din and panic amid the morning rubble, assuring millions of stunned Americans that the national headquarters of their armed forces was still intact and capable of defending us after the mass murder of 3,000? And have we no shame in recognizing that should some congressional critics and Washington harpies get their way, Americans will accomplish what bin Laden’s suicide bombers could not on September 11: remove America’s finest Secretary of Defense in a half century?

The idea that anyone would suggest that Donald Rumsfeld — and now Richard Meyers! — should step down, in the midst of a global war, for the excesses and criminality of a handful of miscreant guards and their lax immediate superiors in the cauldron of Iraq is absurd and depressing all at once.

What would we think now if George Marshall had been forced out on news that 3,000 miles away George S. Patton’s men had shot some Italian prisoners, or Gen. Hodges’s soldiers summarily executed German commandoes out of uniform, or drivers of the Red Ball express had raped French women? Should Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell have been relieved from his command for the February 12-13, 1991, nocturnal bombing of the Al Firdos compound in Baghdad, in which hundreds of women and children of Baathist loyalists were tragically incinerated and pictures of their corpses broadcast around the world, prompting the United States to cease all further pre-planned and approved attacks on the elite in Saddam’s bunkers throughout Baghdad? Of course not.

On the other side of this issue, Ralph Peters does not like Donald Rumsfeld and makes it very clear in his new column: Why the Troops Don’t Trust Rummy.

May 14, 2004 — ACCORDING to his handlers, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad to “boost troop morale.” The best way the SecDef could improve morale would be to resign.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, Rumsfeld and his apparatchiks boldly defended Washington while our troops fought overseas. Now that the battle’s shifted to Capitol Hill in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the SecDef’s in Iraq.

It’s like all those press briefings in which he answers the questions when things are going well, but defers to those in uniform when things are going badly.

Should Rumsfeld resign over the prisoner abuse by rogue MPs? No. He should resign for the good of our military and our country. Those twisted photos are only one symptom of how badly the Rumsfeld era has derailed our military.

Rumsfeld has maintained a positive image with much of America because he controls information fanatically and tolerates no deviation from the party line. Differing opinions are punished in today’s Pentagon - and every field general who has spoken plainly of the deficiencies of either the non-plan for the occupation of Iraq, the lack of sufficient troops (in Iraq or overall) or any aspect of Rumsfeld’s “transformation” plan has seen his career ended.

It isn’t treason to tell the truth in wartime. But it verges on treason to lie. And Rumsfeld lies.

If you saw the speech Rumsfeld gave yesterday to cheering troops in Iraq, though, it certainly didn’t appear as though they distrust him.