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Sun. Dec 19, 2004

Perpetual Rumsfeld

You’ve likely heard about Republicans who want to replace Donald Rumsfeld, or the “Grumbling Swells on Rumsfeld’s Right Flank.” Not knee jerk leftists, but people like Senator Trent Lott, Senator Susan Collins, Senator John McCain, Senator Chuck Hagel, and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

We’re talking about prominent Republicans, members of the Armed Services Committee, veterans (including a former POW), and the architect of the First Gulf War. Will anyone dare to dismiss them as “armchair generals,” as some people have dismissed me during the year or more that I’ve been saying many of the same things? (I was asking “Where Was The Plan” in May, 2003, I first used the phrase “unconscionable malpractice” in November, 2003, directly attached it to Rumsfeld last January, and summed it all up in Good War, Bad Occupation in September)

But never mind a lowly armchair pundit like me. There’s William Kristol, who the NY Times describes as “editor of The Weekly Standard, [and] had long been one of the war’s most ardent supporters among intellectuals.” He wrote a scathing editorial condemning Rumsfeld in the Washington Post last week (“Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It’s performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has”), and in the NY Times, he makes this incredibly important point:

Mr. Kristol, whose magazine has been critical of Mr. Rumsfeld for nearly two years, said Mr. Rumsfeld’s comments to Specialist Wilson were “really the final straw.”

“For me, it’s the combination of the arrogance and the buck-passing manifested in that statement, with the fundamental error he’s made for a year and a half now,” Mr. Kristol said. “That error, from my point of view, is that his theory about the military is at odds with the president’s geopolitical strategy. He wants this light, transformed military, but we’ve got to win a real war, which involves using a lot of troops and building a nation, and that’s at the core of the president’s strategy for rebuilding the Middle East.”

He added, “His stubborn attachment to his particular military theory had really hurt the nation’s ability to carry out its foreign policy.”

Go back and read those last two paragraphs again.

Because what was the eventual goal of the intervention in Iraq? A foothold for democracy, a chance to show how it could work in the Middle East. It’s a shame that priority came somewhere below proving Donald “Democracy Is Messy” Rumsfeld’s theories of military transformation.

Because now, 20 months after we first toppled Saddam and thereby incurred a Geneva Convention obligation to provide security and stability for the country we occupied, 3 employees of the body organizing next month’s elections were killed in central Baghdad ambush, in broad daylight, pulled from a car and executed in front of photographers. That’s the level of security, stability, and hope for democracy that’s been created by Rumsfeld’s theories, when put into practice.

We can’t even defend the main road from the Baghdad airport to the downtown Green Zone. On CBS Sunday Morning, Sen. Hagel reported that he asked the General in command of that area … why? The General replied that he had a company of troops assigned to securing that road. A company can be 62 to 190 troops, “securing” a path approximately eight miles long. As Sen. Hagel noted, under the current conditions, the General needed a battalion (300 to 1,000) to secure that route … but he didn’t have enough troops to assign one.

In April 2003, who’d have thought that 20 months later we’d still need a thousand troops to secure the main road we use in the country … and wouldn’t have them? Who would have thought they’d be executing elections officials in broad daylight on the streets of downtown Baghdad?

And no, the answer to the problem today is not a massive increase in the number of US troops. It’s too late for that. Yes, we need to bump up the number of troops to do everything we can to secure the over 7,000 polling places where Iraqi’s will be voting next month. But that’s security for a specific event. More troops won’t fix Iraq now, that train left the station a long time ago.

The time for more troops, the time for the tens of thousands of reserves and National Guard we have since called up, was in April, 2003. Rumsfeld’s theories of transformation had already been proven, as they applied to the battlefield. They were indeed a massive success. But improved weaponry, advanced technology, and communication networks do not stop looting, or secure neighborhoods, or provide stability. People in uniform with M-16’s do. Lots of them. But they never came, not in the numbers required in those very early days. And those very early days set the tone for everything that followed, and now, it is way way too late to change that with more troops.

Almost all of the difficulties we face today in Iraq can be traced back to that choice. And that particular buck stops on Rumsfeld’s desk.

However, despite of the chorus of criticism from the right, despite the pattern of discontent in US ranks, despite the evidence bloodying the streets of Baghdad, what does the White House have to say? “‘Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a spectacular job,’ the president’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, told ABC’s ‘This Week.’”

Spectacular.

And really, most of this is nothing new. It’s an amplification of what I’ve been saying for some time, and it doesn’t change the ongoing lack of accountability, nay, the lack of capability to admit error, within the Bush administration.

But this is new:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will stop using signing machines to sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and will now write out his signature personally, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The Washington Post reported that the controversy arose when retired Army Col. David H. Hackworth openly criticized the defense chief for not personally signing the letters.

Hackworth wrote that at least one father of a soldier killed in Iraq had complained that Rumsfeld did not personally sign his son’s letter, The Washington Post reported.

Stars and Strips quoted the mother of another fallen soldier who said she was angry that the letter she had received apparently had a stamped signature.

However, The Washington Post reported that President Bush signs each of the letters he send to families of fallen soldiers.

MSNBC : “Report: Rumsfeld will start signing condolences”

You might argue this is a minor nitpicking point, or that it comes from a perpetual axe grinder, David Hackworth. But if you were on the receiving end of a condolence letter that had a stamped signature, I’d bet you’d argue differently. Regardless, I think it is indicative of his priorities. Put yourself in that place, in charge of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans in uniform. How could you ever think that stamping a signature on a letter of condolence could ever be the right thing to do?

It’s indicative. As is the most bizarre statement Rumsfeld released to the Stars and Stripes: “I wrote and approved the now more than 1000 letters sent to family members and next of kin of each of the servicemen and women killed in military action. While I have not individually signed each one, in the interest of ensuring expeditious contact with grieving family members, I have directed that in the future I sign each letter.”

How heart warming. What a touchingly personal admission of error, complete with a closing promise to do better. Because he ordered himself to.

In the past 20 months, about 1,300 have been killed during service in Iraq. There is nothing “average” about the loss of any of those lives, but on average, that’s a little over two per day. On average, how much time out of the day would it take to sign a couple of letters?

Some gave all. Others can’t give 15 seconds to sign their letter of condolence. And at the White House, where the President somehow finds the time to put his own signature on similar letters, in similar numbers, they insist Rumsfeld is doing a “spectacular job.”

You know, there’s a value in conviction to “stay the course.” But it can mutate into obstinate stubbornness. And eventually, it gives the appearance of cold stupidity.

Though spurred by another topic, Phil Carter sums it up well: “True loyalty to the soldier requires we bear witness to their sacrifice, and that we honor their sacrifice by ensuring that their efforts are not wasted, let alone their lives. Our republic may depend on the willingness of young Americans to put themselves in harm’s way as part of our all-volunteer military. But those young Americans depend on us, as citizens, to ensure they go with the right stuff, and for the right cause.”

And, I might add, with the right leadership.