This article from Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine is the second major attempt I’ve seen in the last few months to separate Donald Rumsfeld from the Iraq war. (Here’s the other.)
The idea, basically, is that Rummy was more fixated on modernizing the military than invading any country. Iraq just happened to be the country that the President wanted to wack.
Rumsfeld portrayed the memo as a warning blast, an attempt to do “everything humanly possible to prepare” Bush for the awful responsibility that had settled onto his presidential shoulders — and his shoulders alone. For there comes a point when even the secretary of defense must realize that “it’s not your decision or even your recommendation,” Rumsfeld reflected with Woodward. By which he meant the Iraq war wasn’t Don Rumsfeld’s decision or recommendation.
As if to underline the point, Rumsfeld also told Woodward that he couldn’t recall a moment, in all the months of planning for the war, when Bush asked whether his defense secretary favored the invasion. Nor did Rumsfeld ever volunteer his opinion. (“There’s no question in anyone’s mind but I agreed with the president’s approach,” he added.)
“After considerable time with the top-ranking civilian and military leaders of the Pentagon, a new picture of Donald Rumsfeld has emerged for me, and I now believe something that I would have thought preposterous before: There are no ‘Rumsfeld wars,’” Thomas P.M. Barnett wrote in July’s Esquire.
Of course, he’s integral to how the Pentagon has conducted these operations, and he deserves all the credit and blame any defense secretary naturally receives as a result. But they’re not his wars, and they never were. And in that, critics of the war might have something. The rationales behind the Iraq war belonged to the departing neocons Wolfowitz and Feith (who took pains in an interview to lecture me on the correct usage of the word neocon). And of course the president.
But if that’s true, then what was Rummy doing in the White House on February 11, 1998? That’s the day he and six other conservatives pleaded with then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to go after Iraq. Or a few days earlier, when he signed an open letter to President Clinton which said:
The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
For that matter, what was the Secretary of Defense thinking on September 11, 2001?
“Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq,” [Richard] Clarke said to [60 Minutes’ Leslie] Stahl. “And we all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.’”
Rumsfeld may not like how this war is turning out. But he’s been for it for a long time. And no amount of after-the-fact spin is going to change that.
Hmm. I write about defense and the SecDef has been tech-loopy for quite some time, so I don’t dismiss the possibility.
The Roots of the RMA is in that general area. I’ll give it some thought, and I’ll probably come to a different conclusion that you have.
FWIW, Rumsfeld’s now going around saying it was all Bill Clinton’s idea.
That url is
wampum.wabanaki.net/vault/2005/11/002003.html
Secretary Rumsfeld set up a special intelligence unit within the Pentagon itself to massage / slant / reformat the intelligence to justify going to war with Iraq. He was a prime mover of this invasion.
Let’s ask Col. Wilkerson about that. My understanding is that he believes Rumsfeld was a Senior partner in the evil cabal cherry picking intelligence.
Noah,
Ignoring the discussion of whether or not this outlook is factually correct, do you have any insight as to WHY it’s being promoted? I haven’t seen any effort expended towards this end in the past, and I’m not sure why it’s being done now. I don’t forsee Rumsfeld running for major political office any time soon. Nor does his current position appear to be in jeapordy. And those are the two situations where I would expect this sort of backing off to be used. Care to guestimate towards the underlying motivation for this?
–Christopher Karel
Christopher,
Motivation for distancing himself from what is being called the worst strategic blunder in the history of American foreign policy?
Let me see…hmmm…let me think about this…
I’ve got it! He doesn’t want to be associated with the worst strategic blunder in the history of American foreign policy!
Do I win a cookie?
Chris:
I’m pretty lousy at the pure speculation game. Maybe Rumsfeld wants to distance himself from an enterprise that doesn’t seem to be going all that well. Maybe he wants to cozy up to the senior uniformed officers, as the sweeping Quadrennial Defense Review gets underway; I have yet to speak to a general or an admiral that was particularly enthusiastic about the invasion. Or maybe it’s for history — a way to tell folks down the road that all he *really* cared about was transforming the military, not using it in Iraq.
Just shots in the dark. Like I said, pure speculation ain’t my thang.
nms
What about this passage in the Post story?
Some might quibble with Rumsfeld’s description of the historical moment. At the time he wrote the memo, dated October 15, 2002, Congress had recently voted to give President Bush complete authority to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. A White House spokesman had just confirmed that invasion plans were on Bush’s desk — detailed plans, we now know, which Rumsfeld had been shaping and hammering and editing for much of the previous year.
Rumsfeld is trying to separate himself from the war planning, but I don’t know that David von Drehle (who wrote the piece) quite buys it.
And in any case, von Drehle thinks Rumsfeld utterly screwed up the war planning — not enough troops to secure the country (and the ammo dumps), not enough training (e.g., of the Guardsmen at Abu Ghraib), not enough materiel. Hard to see how that constitutes letting Rummy off the hook.
Rumself to take the blame? Naaa.
The whole blame for the Iraq Debacle is PFC John Shmedlap, 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon, C Company, 1–16 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division.
Rumsfeld going around blaming Clinton now, saying this war was HIS fault? Naww…never happen.
This seems to be the MO of the Administration. Lie, obscure, deny responsibility, point the blame somewhere else, name-calling.
I conject that this “stragetic blunder” could have been AND WAS predicted. Maybe destabilization of the region was the plan after all? Really, a berzerk hornet’s nest in the Middle East could be a perfect rationalization for an extended fight where we could use all of our technological might to vanquish that part of the world once and for all.
Why would we POSSIBLY want to do that? Do I need to tell you?
Hah! Comedically said, Mr. Boatright. Nonetheless, backing away in such a manner doesn’t seem terribly Rummy-esque. He previously seemed quite adamantly defensive of his actions. I would have expected him to defend the course for war rather than distancing himself from it. This just feels out of character.
Noah’s speculation regarding the Quadrennial Defense Review was more along my lines of thinking.
–Christopher Karel
I agree with Robert. It’s all Schmedlap’s fault. We know that the higher-ups in the Bush Admin are all good, honest, smart and competent people, so it can’t possibly be their fault. But Schmedlap comes from a family without means, and you know how those poor folk are. Probably isn’t white either, so it must be definitely his fault. Or maybe he’s white but not Christian? That would explain it.
Rumsfeld is planning for the eventuality that he will be in the vonRundstedt/Jodl role at the war crimes trials.
Good luck, Rummy.
Well, maybe Rummy didn’t want to go to war with Iraq. He just wanted to bomb the hell out of them judging by what Clark said he said on 9/11.
He could save a lot of time and just resign? We all know he wont get fired.
The Iraq war wasn’t a distraction or even separate from “transformation”; it was part of it.
Here’s the key line from the WaPo article:
“Rumsfeld hoped and intended that Iraq would be a proving ground for his theories about a new era of warfare — fast, light, ‘agile,’ high-tech and overwhelming.“
I wrote about this at Needlenose in January 2004:
http://www.needlenose.com/pMachineFree2.2.1/weblog.php?id=P810
——————————————
… the neocon goal was to project American power (not democratic ideals) into the Middle East. In fact, the phrase back in April was that this was a demonstration conflict — quite literally, we were making an example of Saddam Hussein, one that would make other nations think twice about challenging us.
Part of this example was the much-ballyhooed “shock and awe” bombing campaign, which would demonstrate just how much firepower the U.S. could deliver with terrifying precision. But another part of it was going in alone, with a bare minimum of soldiers and no postwar commitment.
After all, “You’d better not cross us, or we’ll spend the better part of a year haggling in the UN to build an international coalition, then tie most of our army down for years rebuilding your country” isn’t all that terrifying a threat, is it? That’s why the Bushite power axis adopted an alternate message: “Cross us, and we’ll knock your head sideways so fast you’ll have no idea what happened. We don’t need anyone’s permission, we don’t need a huge invasion force, and we don’t need to clean up any mess afterward.“
That was the message the Iraq war was intended to communicate. And that’s why we went in the way we did — without a net, so to speak. Because it couldn’t look like a lucky accident if things went well; we had to show that we knew how easy it would be … and how easy it would be to duplicate those results in any country we chose.
——————————————
“You go to war with the army you have.” Yep that was Rummy shortly after the war. He was refering to Iraq and this was maybe summer 03 shortly after the invasion– and he was responding to questions as to why the army wasnt better prepared for the occupation.
And the reason Im mentioning it is becouse we’ve come to find out that the invasion was a likelyhood before Bush got elected, not to mention immediately after 9/11 when the decepticons decided to use it as an excuse to invade Iraq. So he is a full of cr-p moron. 2 full years to preopare for the invasion and he couldnt even be bothered to make sure every soldier had a bullet proof vest. or to make a decent plan for the occupation… moron.
The ‘laying the groundwork for –just following orders-’ wins ! Rummy is now telling us that he sees a strong likelyhood of having to answer to a court! Do I hear a subtle Rummy hint
’Bring it on’?
You have to fight the Court with the defense you got not the one you would like to have.
As someone against the Bushco, LLC, administration from day 1, I wish I could take some schadenfreude at all their misery. The only catch is that the Bush administration’s problems are the entire nation’s problems!
If you haven’t read “Bush on the Couch” by Justin Frank, I would highly, highly recommend it. Our president is a man who once, while drunk, crashed his car into his father’s house and challenged the old man to a fist fight. Yes. That is the man that is running the country and our gunboat, colonial war in Mesopotamia.
Also remember that Rumsfeld wanted to attack Iraq BEFORE Afghanistan. Better targets, remember.
This is a man who on 9/11 who when he was told three of the hijackers had Al Qaeda ties including to the USS Cole bombers, decides we should start planning to attack Iraq.
“Saddam is not the sweet forgiving ruler you people seem to accept him as at this point.“
I can never remember ANYONE even hinting at such a thing. That one was pulled out of your ass.
I guess any lie will do for a “conservative”.
I remember Rumsfield telling a soldier complaining about equipment, “You go to war with what you got…not what you wish you had” correct? That hypocrit just wanted the fight to start regardless of preparedness!
It isn’t right for people to shift blame for bad ideas.
Did I tell ya that its Bush’s fault that I lost my pen?
Did I tell ya that its Bush’s fault that I lost my pen?
Posted by: Dennis at November 21, 2005 01:30 PM
—————–
Is he also to blame for your missing brain?
Check out a site dedicated to the absurdity and satire nature of saying “It’s All George Bush’s Fault!“
http://www.itsallgeorgebushsfault.com
Regards,
Notta Libb
It isn’t right for people to shift blame for bad ideas.
It isn’t right for people to shift blame for bad ideas.
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