I miss Rummy...

I miss Rummy.  After 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld could be counted on for clarity and plain talking, unlike most of the political establishment.  Whether or not you agreed with his opinions and conclusions, he was always worth listening to – he had a way of getting to the heart of a problem that was quite refreshing, and on occasion he was laugh-out-loud funny.  He's still that way.  In a recent interview, asked about Obama, he said:

I begin with incompetence as a problem.  I think his behavior reflects a lack of experience and a lack of a strategic concept, or some principles or values that he tests things against.  We are contributing to a vacuum in the world that’s going to be filled by people who don’t have our values and don’t have our interests and our beliefs, and that means it’s going to be a more dangerous world for us and for others.

The interviewer further reports Rumsfeld's state of mind:

What seems to bother Rumsfeld most is his sense that America is a country in steep decline – which is a word that he used more than once. While he thinks that Obama’s Syria policy is a fig leaf for a disaster, he actually seemed less focused on specific policy choices than on his sense that the socio-economic foundation of American power is disintegrating. Without sustained American economic strength, neither American threats nor American offers of friendship are likely to carry much weight with the rest of the world.

That's consistent with my own sense, but somehow it's more worrying when Rumsfeld says it...