My Friend Donald Rumsfeld, a Fighter ‘til the End
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
LONDON — My friend Donald Rumsfeld is the main casualty of the Republican Party’s disastrous showing in yesterday’s midterm elections. But I feared for his future when all four service newspapers — the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Times — all simultaneously called for his resignation last week.
Mr. Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the most controversial and combative defense secretaries in American history. But despite possessing a formidable intellect and a deep understanding of military history and issues, his uncompromising style nevertheless made him deeply unpopular with Washington’s powerful defense establishment. This ultimately frustrated his goal of seeking to re-organize the American Army to enable it to operate with smaller numbers.
His biggest failing, though, was his inability to provide adequate numbers of troops to control post-war Iraq, and his disastrous decision to allow the neoconservative elements of the Pentagon — many of whom occupied quite senior positions — to take control of the post-conflict administration of Iraq. The lack of troops meant that the coalition — which had waged a highly impressive and ultimately successful campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in the spring of 2003 — was unable to control the orgy of violence and looting that erupted after the main military operation had ended. And the neoconservative vision of turning Iraq into a Western-style democracy was totally alien to the wishes of the Iraqi people.
It was Mr. Rumsfeld’s determination to cut the numbers of serving American soldiers that is mainly responsible for what American generals see as a shortage of troops on the ground in Iraq.
In personality, Mr. Rumsfeld, whom I have met on several occasions at the Pentagon, seemed entirely suited to his post. He had been a champion wrestler at Princeton and a naval pilot in an early stage in his career.
Before making a fortune in business, he had also been the youngest secretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, going on to serve his son as the oldest holder of the office.
Despite his reputation for abrasiveness, I always found Donald Rumsfeld a charming host, quite unpompous, and full of amusing quips. He was not at all a politician in manner. He was far more like an outspoken professor of politics from an Ivy League college — hence his popularity as a television personality at the start of the Iraq war.
His association with the casualties of the Iraq war is the root cause of his unpopularity with the high command and also with the Republican electorate.
But somehow I find it hard to believe that we have heard the last of Donald Rumsfeld.