Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, February 08, 2011 6:15:32 PM
Donald Rumsfeld's autobiography Known and Unknown: A Memoir was published today by Sentinel which is a conservative imprint of Penguin Publishers. I haven't had the opportunity to read this important historical work yet but it is already drawing attention. Rumsfeld, by any measure, has had successful careers in the private sector and public service. He served as a congressional representative from Illinois and was a key supporter of the 1966 Freedom of Information Act which drastically, if clumsily, increased public access to executive and independent agency government branch records. Rumsfeld also has served twice as Secretary of Defense. His most consequential and controversial service in this position was between 2001-2006 when military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq occurred. No matter what policies the U.S. pursued in responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Government and its leading national security policymakers, including Rumsfeld, would have received criticism.
Sometimes such criticism is justified but frequently it is not. Rumsfeld received more than his fair share of carping criticism from penile-brained critics whose knowledge of warfare and Islamist terrorism almost equals Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen's familiarity with sobriety.
Rumsfeld made significant mistakes in overseeing these operations. While the conventional military operations in Iraq in early 2003 were properly resourced and brilliantly executed, he failed to provide proper personnel for occupation and counterinsurgency duty. He was right to insist that the military quit relying on World War II and Cold War conventional forces paradigms for fighting emerging military operations, but he put to much trust in the technological seductions of a revolution in military affairs to effectively fight countersurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such operations require successful and sustained cultivation of local populations by forces with a permanent presence in the countries where such operations are being conducted. Sadly, many U.S. and allied lives were lost because of this oversight but that does not diminish the U.S. moral right to militarily intervene in these countries and to help them on the long and painful path to some modicum of domestic stability.
Rumsfeld has been criticized by his grandstanding critics for not showing sufficient self-flagellation over his real or imagined mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Such emotional ejaculations are best suited for private conduct such as marital relationships, personal soul-searching, or confessing to God or ministers instead of capitulating to the ignorant pantings of antiwar critics who have zero understanding of the Islamist threats facing the U.S. during the Bush 43 Administration which remain today under the Obama Administration. Rumsfeld and Bush were also deficient in frequently communicating to the American public and world opinion that the war against Islamist terrorism will take decades, will be brutal and messy at times, and not have a happy World War II type resolution such as the Japanese surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri. Despite these flaws, he conducted himself honorably and history will take a critical but more favorable and nuanced view of his DOD stewardship in four to five decades when relevant documentation is declassified. Unlike his successor Robert Gates, he resisted pressures to allow open military service by homosexuals and was willing to challenge entrenched military opinion when he thought such views were detrimental to the ability of U.S. forces to win against emerging asymmetric military threats. Such attributes are signs of courage and strong leadership instead of a willingness to acquiesce to popular fantasies or long-standing institutional beliefs.