Vivid Contrasts; Rumsfeld's Many Enemies

No more vivid contrast could be seen between war (by some in the media) against the Iraq War, on one hand, and the realities on the ground, on the other, than within the very pages of the Washington Post yesterday. Page one hosted an article touting the recent denouncing of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by a number of retired generals. Page twenty-one, in stark contrast, hosted a column by Wade Zirkle, a Marine who spent two tours of duty in Iraq and was wounded there, denouncing media coverage of the war and the "low troop morale" theme of war opponents.

Unsurprisingly, the opinions of angry retired generals apparently qualify as news. The opinions of an Iraq War veteran are placed where opinions belong--or at least opinions that do not fit with the media's "story" about Iraq--in the opinion section behind the actual news, not on the front page where opinion pathetically masquerades as news. Real news like, say, the Army being 15% ahead of its reenlistment goal for the year, is not given anywhere near as much attention for some reason.

Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards attributes the gripes of retired generals to a difference between an old school of military thought and a new school--the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs. This is the Powell Doctrine (use a sledgehammer) against the--for lack of a better term--Rumsfeld Doctrine (use a scalpel). Unfortunately for everyone, of course, neither sledgehammers nor scalpels work terribly well against insurgencies or guerillas.

I think that a lot of the sniping (from these sources) at Rumsfeld primarily stems not from any malicious political intent, or from any difference in schools of military thought. Most attacks on Rumsfeld from these quarters--whether from retired generals or from the likes of Bill Kristol at the neoconservative Weekly Standard--have several other primary origins.

The first is surprisingly well-illuminated (probably unintentionally, or it would likely have been left out) by a CNN article about the recent Rumsfeld-general spat. Major General Charles Swannack is quoted as saying, "If you understand what Secretary Rumsfeld has done in his time in the Pentagon, he personally is the one who selects the three-star generals to go forward to the president for the Senate to confirm." Emphasis mine. I should point out that Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense. This is, it bears repeating, part of his job. Maybe we should just get rid of the Secretary of Defense and have the generals report straight to the president? Would it be better to have generals chosen after a Congressional hearings circus, a la judicial nominees? I shudder to think of it.

While not to disparage General Swannack's service, I see two stars on his shoulders in his picture on the CNN website, not three. Rumsfeld is exceptionally ruthless, and has destroyed many careers. Perhaps the career of Charles Swannack is among them. If so, would he not be rather bitter towards the person that cut off his path of advancement?

Maybe I read too much into the quotation. However, I think it is at least as valid a reason for criticism as the whole old school versus new school or Clintonista theory. How many commanders of divisions in the Army usually go on to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant (3-star) general? Such statistics would provide insight and illumination into the potential motives of this recent group of Rumsfeld critics.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that there are 276 major generals (or equivalent) in the United States military. It stands to reason that, when figuring in retired generals, there is a sufficient pool to pull from to find a diversity of opinion from Rumsfeld supporters (like Lieutenant General Mike DeLong, General Richard Meyers, and General Tommy Franks) to Rumsfeld opponents (covered in the aforementioned articles). Some of these retired generals will even embed themselves with television news shows to draw circles on maps with light pens.

It also stands to reason that if the Pentagon thought so highly of you as to make you one of the few major generals to command one of the Army's ten (or so) active duty combat divisions, then you are pretty likely to advance from being one of the 276 2-star generals to one of the 125 or so 3-star generals. General Swannack was not among them (recall that it appears to have been under Swannack that the 82nd Airborne made Fallujah a no-go zone in Iraq in 2004, before the military had to go in a second time to clean the town out). Another Rumsfeld critic, Major General John Riggs, was canned (as barely mentioned today in the Washington Post) for infractions involving outside contractors. (Oh the irony that could be had if Haliburton was involved somehow, but I digress.) Major General Paul Eaton, also a Rumsfeld critic, headed up the training of the Iraqi forces in 2004. You know, the Iraqi forces that war critics have harped on constantly as being insufficiently trained and ill-prepared.

Maybe these individuals perceive their careers cut short by Rumsfeld, and are exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to complain upon entering retirement. As Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace noted, "We had then and have now every opportunity to speak our minds, and if we do not, shame on us... The articles that are out there about folks not speaking up are just flat wrong." I should hope that, if they felt this way when they were in the service, they said something then. Saying it now is a day late and a dollar short.

If the first source of Rumsfeld criticism (at least from quarters other than the anti-war left or political partisans) comes from people inside the Pentagon that he has stepped on (or kicked out), the second comes--I think--from people outside of the Pentagon that he has stepped on. Rumsfeld, I guess that you can tell, is abrasive and stomps on people.

Bill Kristol, leader among the neoconservative movement, turned on Rumsfeld after the 2004 election. This was probably in hopes of getting Rumsfeld replaced with Wolfowitz or someone more neoconservative, and to make the Secretary of Defense a convenient scapegoat for everything that has not gone right in Iraq. The invasion of which was, after all, the centerpiece of neoconservative policy towards the Middle East, so it makes sense for individuals that are fundamentally ideologues to find someone to blame--rather than their ideology itself--for problems along the way.

Donald Rumsfeld has sharp elbows. He is a bureaucratic infighter of the first rank. He outmaneuvered Colin Powell on Iraq. He has outmaneuvered Congress and his own generals on military reform and on the cutting of big-ticket military programs, like the Crusader howitzer and the Comanche stealth attack helicopter, to say nothing of base closings. He outmaneuvered the State Department (probably much to his own--and our--later woe) on postwar planning for Iraq.

Rummy has enemies. A big long line of them have been waiting for a long time for the chance to kick him whenever he is down. They run the range from Democrats who dislike administration policy personified by Rumsfeld, to generals whose cherished notions and careers Rumsfeld has tossed out the window, to ideologues within the American right that blame him for the failure to implement their theories and manifest them into reality.

But, in terms of "downs", the whole griping general kerfuffle is a relatively small one for the Secretary of Defense. It is a media-manufactured tempest in a teapot. If George W. Bush would not fire Donald Rumsfeld after the initial problems in Iraq, if he would not fire him at the height of Abu Ghraib (after which, it is notable, Rumsfeld twice offered to resign 1 and 2) with an election looming, and would not fire him when he easily had the chance at the start of a second term, then it seems unlikely to me that he will fire him now either.

For better or worse, Donald Rumsfeld seems to be here to stay.