Dan Rather grimaces whenever pronouncing the man’s name. Mo
Dowd, the New York Times’s anti-testosterone columnist, is
so crazed by him that she writes lousy poetry attacking him. John
McCain says he has no confidence in him, and the most prominent
members of the Ankle-Biter Caucus — Trent Lott, Chuck Hagel and
Susan Collins — all line up to take their shots at Big Dog Donald
Rumsfeld, the man they love to hate. Even Wade Sanders — one of
the Swift Boat vets who campaigned for Kerry — is in on the act.
Sanders sounds a lot like Lott, Hagel, and Collins. Or is it the
other way around?
The harpies of the left — and the opportunists of the right —
realize that because the path to victory or defeat in any war is
strewn with setbacks and mistakes, Rumsfeld is much more exposed to
their flak than newly reelected President Bush. Rumsfeld stands for
everything they despise about President Bush: decisiveness,
directness and — most unforgivably — impatience with those who
most richly deserve it. Like the CIA, the State Department, and the
U.N., just for starters. Mr. Rumsfeld actually had the audacity to
call Old Europe by its proper name and, according to Ken
Timmerman’s book, The French Betrayal of America, was fond
of quoting your humble servant’s words, “Going to war without
France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just
leave a lot of noisy, useless baggage behind.” Oh, the horror.
THE LATEST KERFUFFLE resulted from a session Mr. Rumsfeld had with
soldiers in Iraq on December 8, where he answered a soldier’s
question about the scarcity of armor for light vehicles in Iraq. If
you listen to MoDo, CBS and John McCain, you would believe Rumsfeld
told the soldier, “that’s a stupid question, and we don’t worry
about it because we don’t give a damn about your life or safety.”
But that’s not even close to what he said.
The “question” — really a short speech written by a reporter —
said, “Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on
three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively
soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We’re digging pieces of rusted
scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that’s already been
shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put
on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament
vehicles to carry with us north.”
Mr. Rumsfeld responded honestly and at length. He said he talked
to the commanding general on the way out to meet the soldiers about
the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. He said, the
vehicles “have been brought from all over the world, wherever
they’re not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I’m told
that they are being — the Army is — I think it’s something like
400 a month are being done. And it’s essentially a matter of
physics. It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part
of the Army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability
of doing it.
“As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not
the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the
Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce
the armor necessary at a rate that they believe — it’s a greatly
expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they
believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this
moment.” In short, an honest answer from a concerned leader. (You
can read the transcript of the whole session here.) And, though you’ll never learn this from
the ankle-biters, Rumsfeld received a standing ovation from the
troops when the session ended.
EVER SINCE THE FALL of Baghdad, Mr. Rumsfeld has suffered one media
feeding frenzy after another. When the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse
scandal broke, he and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Dick Myers were
subjected to a six-hour marathon of congressional hearings in which
they were subjected to little speeches by little men aimed more at
scoring a sound bite on the evening news than at getting answers.
He has been accused of spending too much on the war, and too
little. His faults are found in every failure on the battlefield
and in the nation-building process we are pursuing in Iraq. Few
know, and fewer still care, about the facts of the latter.
In the planning for the Iraq campaign, Mr. Rumsfeld proposed a
plan in which a provisional government would have been formed
before the invasion, and would have taken over immediately,
reducing the need for American presence, and making our presence
that of one ally helping another. A competing plan, advanced by
Colin Powell and George Tenet, chose an extended occupation with
Iraq ruled by a MacArthur-like consul, and gradual turnover of Iraq
to an interim government chosen by the major representatives of the
Iraqi population. The President chose the latter, the wrong plan,
and then stuck Rumsfeld with the job of implementing a plan
Rumsfeld knew was not likely to succeed. In the past twenty months,
the interim government wasn’t formed as predicted, because some of
the major Iraqi leaders — most notably leading Shia cleric Ali
al-Sistani — refused to play L. Paul Bremer’s diplomatic games.
Worse still, the President hasn’t yet decided to deal with the
insurgency at its sources. Without the support of Syria and Iran,
the insurgency wouldn’t be able to continue under the constant
pressure of Coalition military action.
Now, with the Iraqi election scheduled in about five weeks,
Rumsfeld is still struggling to push the Iraqis into democracy, and
with mixed results. Predictably, the U.N. — whose function it is
to assist new democracies in running elections — has refused to
help bail America out of a situation that the U.N. opposed. In
Iraq, a nation of about 24 million, tens of thousands of election
assistance representatives should be on the ground. Instead, the UN
has — so far — provided fewer than fifty. And, somehow, to those
who oppose the President and the war we are fighting, that’s all
Rumsfeld’s fault. Nonsense.
FORTUNATELY FOR MR. RUMSFELD, and for us, the President has spoken
forcefully in support of Rumsfeld and the job he is doing. And for
every CBS there is a Mitch McConnell. For every New York
Times or CNN, there is a Pete Domenici, a Bill Frist, a Kay
Bailey Hutchison and a Jim Inhofe. And a Jeff Sessions. All of
those senators have spoken out in Mr. Rumsfeld’s defense, and
quieted the media feeding frenzy. For a while.
Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions is one of Rumsfeld’s most
respected and outspoken supporters. He took time from his Christmas
Eve shopping trip to talk to me about the current attacks on the
Big Dog. Sessions said Rumsfeld is a “remarkable man. He’s been the
point man in the war on terror from the beginning.” Rumsfeld
“understands the military and its need to transform.”
I asked Sen. Sessions what motivates Rumsfeld’s critics. He said
there were three reasons. First, he said, “the Democrats are
determined to find fault” in the war and how it is being run.
Sessions sees that in any war, the enemy evolves and so must we. He
said, “Rumsfeld, the President and all of their team have to be on
top of this and able to change tactics at a moment’s notice.” He’s
confident they are, and are getting the job done.
The second reason, Sessions said, is that “people who have been
supportive of the war, including some editors, are now more
difficult.” Many of those who advocated the Iraq campaign most
vehemently are now afraid that they’ll be blamed for its failures
and the sacrifices our troops are called upon to make it succeed.
Though Sessions didn’t say it, it’s clear that some of those
vehement advocates of invading Iraq — including one notable neocon
magazine — are political cowards. Sessions said, “The
second-guessers enjoy coming out and shooting the [politically]
wounded.” It’s not hard to figure out who he meant.
The third reason is that there is always “some temptation to
play for the media.” If you’re a Republican senator, the best way
to buy a place on Meet the Press is to criticize the
President. Because the President is in so strong a position, it’s
not possible to damage him — yet — by carping about the daily
problems in Iraq. That leaves the people who are running the show
as the only practical target, and that means Mr. Rumsfeld.
MR. RUMSFELD SUFFERS from one of the faults his boss often
displays: loyalty to those who are not loyal to him, and those who
don’t do their jobs well. It’s unheard of to be three years into a
war and never to have fired a general. The military leadership Mr.
Rumsfeld works with is not of his creation. Those generals rose to
prominence under the Clintons, and many are more politically minded
than warrior-like. Neither Rumsfeld nor the President has fired a
single one, despite some bad decisions and — in the case of former
Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki — not only bad judgment but
political campaigning against the President’s plans and objectives.
Shinseki should have been fired, but wasn’t. Too many of the
Clinton-chosen bureaucrat-generals remain on duty today, though
warriors should long ago have taken their place. Military
transformation means transforming the generals, not just the
hardware.
But Jeff Sessions has it right. As another Southern gentleman of
my acquaintance often says, “If you can’t run with the big dogs,
you’d better go sit on the porch.” That admonition should be taken
to heart by all the ankle biters in Congress and the press who are
calling for the beheading of Big Dog Don Rumsfeld. Their criticisms
— especially those coming from congressional Republicans — are
the worst sort of cowardice and political opportunism.
TAS Contributing Editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than
You Think (Regnery Publishing).
