Special to WorldTribune.com

Greta Van Susteren, Feb. 17, FOX News: They are savages. And tonight, more news breaking. ISIS militants have reportedly burned to death 45 people in Iraq. The horrifying slaughter taking place in the western Iraqi town of al Baghdadi, just five miles from an air base staffed by hundreds of U.S. Marines. Reports the victims may have been members of the Iraqi security forces.

And former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, joins us. Good evening, sir. … It’s stunning, 121 Christians in Libya the other, and now this.

Donald Rumsfeld: It is terrible thing that’s happening in our world. And it brings back to mind the period before World War II where people said I didn’t know or I was just following orders or it’s random. But when you systematically kill Jews and kill Christians and say that’s what you are doing, it’s not random. It’s purposeful. And it seems to me a lot of the country is still in a state of denial about it. And the only way you can deal with something like that is to put it up on the table, call it what it is, deal with it. And any idea that you can defend everywhere at every moment of the day or night against every conceivable technique is simply wrong. If you try to defend everywhere, you defend nowhere. The only way you can deal with it is to go after those people.

Van Susteren: Well, you know, I have done a little research … about an elusive enemy, terrorists. Not like a nation state where we know where they are, know their borders. This has been going on and on and on. It’s getting uglier and worse.

Rumsfeld: People are treating it like it’s new. And it isn’t. Back when I was President Reagan’s Middle East envoy, I recall there was something like 37 terrorist acts in 30 days in 13 different countries. And the difference today is that weapons are more lethal. And there is the media. So, it is dramatized and people see it and it — I think it was Lenin who said the purpose of terrorism is not to kill people. It’s to terrorize them. It’s to alter their behavior. And the world sits by not really recognizing that the whole concept of trying to create an Islamic caliphate is fundamentally destructive of the whole concept of the nation-state that orders our world.

Van Susteren: … They are killing Jews and Christians. A lot of our viewers are on to it. It’s obvious to them. They are very disenchanted because they don’t know what this White House’s strategy is.

Rumsfeld: I think back to the 1930s when the Holocaust was going on and the Nazis were killing Jews by the tens of thousands and the United States government turned away ships filled with Jews from our ports. They ended up going down to the Dominican Republic and finally being admitted to their country by that dictator down there so many decades ago.

And the anti-Semitism that’s rising in the world today, we read about Jewish cemeteries being desecrated, synagogues being attacked. It’s important we not have a leadership vacuum, that we, in fact, take a problem, put it on the table, look at it, be honest about it, and then develop a strategy to deal with it, which is hard, admittedly. Once you decide you are worried about something, you have to say what your goal is. If you set a goal, somebody is not going to like it and criticize it. It takes courage to set a goal. It takes courage to develop a course of action to deal with that goal and perseverance. Even though life is tough. It’s going to be difficult. You are going to have failures and successes. But you have to be persistent and believe in what you’re doing. And if you deny what the problem is, you can’t even get started.

Van Susteren: We have new secretary of defense, as of today. What’s going to be his biggest challenge, do you think?

Rumsfeld: He is a good man. In my view, he was a good appointment. I see him as a highly skilled technical person for the department. I’m not part of the Obama White House, but I have trouble believing that the people in the White House, with all the czars and the different factions in there, that — I mean, he is going to be the secretary of defense for this president, and this president was elected, so he will do a very good job down in the department. How successful he will be getting the president or the key people, Valerie Jarrett and the other people that are so influential in the department, to alter their behavior or advice or views, I don’t think that’s going to happen. The president has got two more years. It seems to me the only thing that could change it is not going to be the press. It’s not going to be the Congress. It would have to be people in his cabinet, people in his White House staff going in and saying, “Look, we have been wrong, we are making a mistake. We are going to have to calibrate and deal with this problem or the vacuum we have created is going to impose enormous cost on this country in time, in money, cost, and in blood.”

Van Susteren: What do you make of what’s going on in the Ukraine with Putin?

Rumsfeld: Well, it’s free play for Putin. He sees no — nothing that would dissuade him. Europe is impotent in dealing with this problem. They have allowed themselves to develop a degree of dependency on Russian oil and energy. And I don’t see them — Ukraine is enormously important. Right before our eyes, the world, not just the United States, but Western Europe is letting things happen there that, rather than dissuading further adventuresome behavior by the Russians, it encourages it. You have to ask what’s next? The Baltics? Central Asia? If a person is not dissuaded, they are going to do what they can do. People like that, they are not going to change their behavior unless there is some penalty for behaving the way they are behaving.

  Rumsfeld on how to deal with ISIL threat, Valerie Jarrett and Vladimir Putin, WorldTribune.com