Donald Rumsfeld: An Appreciation | The American Spectator

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If you know nothing else about former Secretary of Defense Donald Henry Rumsfeld, who died Wednesday at the age of 88, you should know this.

At 9:37 a.m. on September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorists shot down United Airlines Flight 77 west of the Pentagon. One of the first rescuers on the scene was 69-year-old defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. With the arrival of rescue teams, firefighters, and police, Rumsfelds ’elaborate protection eventually pulled him to start managing the war that killed only 3,000 Americans on our own land.

Rumsfelds ’actions that day demonstrated his lifelong commitment to the security of the United States and to the safety of its citizens.

Rumsfeld was a brilliant and intense man, exploded with talent and strength. His term as secretary of defense for President George W. Bush is the second time he has held that position, first as the youngest secretary of defense and then as the oldest was a stepping stone to a political career that included being elected. to four terms in the House of Representatives, serving as White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, and acting as chairman for a major drug firm.

Rumsfeld can be characterized as an American state. He was a deep thinker, a planner, and a man who, on many occasions in his life, was able to bring his ideas to fulfillment.

While serving as Gerald Fords chief of staff, Rumsfeld himself saw intense rivalry among advisers for influence over the president. When Ford appointed him secretary of defense (a position he has held since 197577), Rumsfeld joined that competition for influence with character strength.

His chief competitor then was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. When I interviewed Kissinger decades ago, he told me that Rumsfeld was an expert opponent of bureaucracy, which could mean Rumsfeld won some of their battles for Fords policy decisions. They respect each other, but they are friends.

Some of Rumsfelds ’best accomplishments were achieved in the years between his first term as secretary of defense and his second term, which has been since 200106.

One of them was in the long -forgotten Rumsfeld Commission, the formal Commission to Review the Missile Fleece Threat in the United States, which reported its findings in 1998. That report formed the basis for Bushs ’action. in December 2001 when he cautiously announced that the US would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

Attached to that report is the more unambiguous Sintat Inquiry into the Rumsfeld Commission report, which sheds light on the intelligence problems that led to the failure of the intelligence communities against the 9/11 attacks. .

The Side Letter made two important findings. First, it found that the intelligence community was not positioned to address the ballistic missile threat because it lacked the technical and linguistic expertise and national capabilities of people who understood our opposing cultures and governments. The lack of capabilities in the country is almost certainly still valid.

The Side Letter also strongly criticized the failure of senior intelligence consumers to include the president, national security advisers, senior military leaders including the secretary of defense, and others who adequately interacted with intelligence analysts, thus deprived both consumers and manufacturers of the ability to respond to each other’s understandings and needs. The intelligence communities are utterly disappointed to warn us of the 9/11 attacks that are at least in part because of that shortcoming.

And then came 9/11. Rumsfeld is sometimes called the architect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that’s close to the mark. But, at least two of the most important issues of how wars were fought, Bush had, as he said in another context decided, and repealed Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld has always been opposed to nation building, the strategy that Bush set and failed for 20 years. Rumsfeld also understood unlike Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden that in order to defeat Islamic fascism and its seed terrorism, we must attack and defeat Islamist ideology.

On both of those issues, George W. Bush opposed Rumsfelds ’advice.

During his presidential campaign in 2000, Bush said we should use our military to win wars, not build nations. But when we went to war in Afghanistan in October 2001, he was converted to neoconservatism or more likely captive on the advice of then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

We all remember the Powells Pottery Barn doctrine if you break it, you buy it where it is necessary to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush, intentionally or not a neo-Wilsonian, took that to mean that we would try to rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq while putting Jeffersonian democracy in countries that it could not accept.

Rumsfeld failed to convince Bush against nation -building in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In his book, Known and Unknown, he writes, It is my view that we need to limit our mission to capturing terrorists who will find their way to Afghanistan, I advised the president. We should not make a career out of changing Afghanistan. But Bush decided to do just that.

Entering another country -developing exercise is not Rumsfelds ’intention to invade Iraq. Although Rumsfeld did not tell me this, I concluded from other sources that there were two plans offered to Bush for the war in Iraq. The first, written by Rumsfeld and his Pentagon team, called for an invasion, killed many people who needed to be killed, ousted Saddam Hussein, and then left Iraq for several months.

The other plan, devised by Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, required the overthrow of Saddam and then the rebuilding of Iraq in our image. Powell and Tenet prevailed despite Rumsfelds ’advice.

If you have read the memoirs written by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, you know that the only one who understands that the war against Islamic terrorists and the countries that possess them is a ideological war is Blair and Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld understood that we could not win the war against Islamic terrorism without defeating its ideology.

Once, after his second term at the Pentagon, I asked him why we had to fight the ideological war. He told me he tried to do this in an attempt to organize a multi-departmental effort at the cabinet level but Bush would not support him, so the effort died. Obama had already given up the ideological war, and Trump never understood the need for it. Thus, we are doomed to the eternal war against Islamic fascism.

Beginning in 2005, I had the privilege of being a member of a team of military analysts on TV speaking to warhead former or retired military officers brought to the Pentagon to receive instructions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. from Rumsfeld himself and most of our top military leaders. Among them are two successive chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gens. Richard Myers and Peter Pace as well as war commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq such as Gens. George Casey and David Petraeus.

Yes, we only heard one side of the story. Yes, the staff of the Department of Defense public sector is bent on answering our requests for information and access. But most of us, I believe, have enough judgment to reach our own conclusions.

Along with other group members, I visited Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility. Separately, on occasions, I have interviewed Rumsfeld or one of the leading generals for print or radio. Through those experiences, and in meetings with Rumsfeld after he left the Pentagon, I also met him as well as an outsider. I admire him despite the medias ruining him and perhaps in part because of it.

For a moment after 9/11, Rumsfeld was a media darling. The invasion of Afghanistan began in secret in October 2001 but quickly became public, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was fully publicized and debated before it began.

Rumsfeld enjoyed sparring with the press. I remember he once stopped at a question a bit too long and, finally, grinned as he told the reporter something like, I’m trying to imagine how best not to answer your question.

Before the invasion of Iraq, both our allies in Europe and the media moved quickly to oppose that war. I remember French Foreign Minister Dominique Villepin being asked on the first day of the invasion of Iraq who she wanted to win the war. De Villepin refused to answer the question.

Too quickly, Rumsfeld went from media darling to media villain, which can be seen in the horrific comments many in the media on his death.

Rumsfeld left the Pentagon in 2006 and must have been smiling when he did. He survived the prisoner abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib, to which he had no connection, because Bush was smart enough to reject his resignation letter. Rumsfeld survived the general’s uprisings because the former generals who launched their attacks on him for handling the war in Iraq and Afghanistan were the people in high-responsibility positions who did not voice their criticisms. when they were on active duty.

And then there was the 2008 New York Times attack on the military analyst group of which I was a member.

The group has always been a bit controversial because the members of the media left behind are jealous. Immediately after Rumsfeld left the Pentagon, his successor, Robert Gates, disbanded the group.

The Times article, in which the reporter received a Pulitzer Prize, accused us of being spokespersons for the Pentagon, reiterating the points in question for the benefit of getting the track inside. Many team members are likely to do this. The article also alleged that many in the group had connections with contractors who benefited from their connection to Rumsfeld.

That article initiated a General Department of Defense investigation. Within a month, all members of the team, including me, sat down for the inspector’s general interview.

The investigation determined that there were no violations of Law or Department of Defense regulations. The matter is over.

Lost in America was a great statesman and brilliant thinker when Donald Rumsfeld died. His legacy is a cornucopia of wisdom that future presidents must understand and develop. Rest in peace, Mr. Rumsfeld. We who have known you, even if you have, have understood the tremendous contributions you have made to our country.

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