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Sept. 14 — Since
he returned to the Pentagon three years ago, Donald H. Rumsfeld has been
one of the most activist secretaries of defense in a generation,
challenging the uniformed brass to modernize the nation’s military into
a 21st century fighting force and leading the armed services through two
major wars in 18 months.
ALONG THE
way, Rumsfeld has rankled many in the military for his aggressive style
and far-reaching agenda for “transforming” the military, even as he has
won acclaim for his leadership of the Pentagon through the trauma of the
Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the building and ensuing conflicts in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war on terrorism. Now, less than five
months after he helped formulate and execute a bold plan in which a U.S.
invasion force drove to Baghdad and toppled the Iraqi government in 21
days, Rumsfeld is facing his greatest challenge yet.
Having demanded full authority for overseeing the occupation and
reconstruction of Iraq, elbowing the State Department aside, Rumsfeld is
being blamed by many in Congress and the military establishment for the
problems facing the United States, which include mounting U.S.
casualties and costs exceeding $1 billion a week.
Whatever else Rumsfeld
achieves at the Pentagon, the outcome of the Iraqi occupation will go a
long way toward determining his legacy in this, his second stint as
secretary of defense. It also will affect the political fortunes of
President Bush, whose reelection bid could hinge on events in Iraq.
Rumsfeld’s ability to weather his largest crisis will depend to a
degree on his standing with three key constituencies: the White House,
Congress and the military’s officer corps. How he does with them will be
shaped largely by whether security improves in Iraq, according to
officials in the administration, Congress and the Pentagon.
At the moment, at least, Rumsfeld’s standing among all three is mixed.
White House officials said that Rumsfeld retains the full confidence of
the president. But after a long winning streak, the Pentagon chief has
begun to lose some policy battles, most notably when Bush decided to
seek a new United Nations resolution on Iraq — a course about which
Rumsfeld has expressed reservations.
Rumsfeld’s relations with the military have been strained since
he returned to office. This is particularly true within the Army, which
felt threatened by his modernization plans before the Sept. 11 attacks
and where concern runs deep about the damage the Iraq occupation could
do the service in the long run.
Rumsfeld appears to be losing ground most dramatically on Capitol
Hill, where even some conservative Republicans are expressing concern
about his handling of Iraq. “Winning the peace is a lot different than
winning the war,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who counts
himself as a strong Rumsfeld supporter but notes that not all his
colleagues feel the same. “His bluntness comes across as arrogance, and
he’s made some enemies on Capitol Hill, probably because of style
differences,” said Graham, an Air Force veteran who serves on the Armed
Services Committee.
Sen. John W.
Warner (R-Va.), the panel’s chairman, struck a decidedly cool note when
asked how Rumsfeld is doing. “Understandably we have some differences,”
he said Friday in a written response. “However, I consistently work with
Secretary Rumsfeld to support the president and the men and women of the
armed forces, and have a high regard for his integrity and
forcefulness.”
‘RUMMY IS A SURVIVOR’
On Capitol Hill and elsewhere, Rumsfeld’s assertive
self-confidence and brash style — seared into the public’s memory during
televised news conferences during the Afghanistan war — for many months
seemed to fuel the secretary’s popularity. Now, those same qualities
strike many inside and outside of government as a vulnerability that
leads them to question whether Rumsfeld has the flexibility to make the
changes and compromises they see as necessary to fixing the situation in
Iraq.
Robert McNamara for four years of Vietnam going down the toilet was
absolutely convinced with a religious zeal that what he was doing was
right thing,” said Thomas E. White, a retired Army general who was fired
as Army secretary this year by Rumsfeld. “It wasn’t until 30 years later
that it dawned on him that he was dead wrong. And I think you have the
same thing with Don Rumsfeld.”
McNamara served as secretary of defense in the 1960s under
Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Most analysts said they believe it is far too early to count
Rumsfeld out, and many supporters said they are convinced he will rise
and prove his critics wrong once again. His backers note that the
secretary continues to have a close relationship with Vice President
Cheney, who worked under Rumsfeld in the Gerald R. Ford White House.
As a longtime aide to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell,
Rumsfeld’s principal rival in the national security arena, F. William
Smullen might be expected to revel in Rumsfeld’s difficulties. To the
contrary, Smullen argues that it is grossly unfair to hang the problems
of postwar Iraq on the defense secretary. “I think there is plenty of
blame to go around, far and wide, to include Congress and the mass
media, and people are going to be hard-pressed to dump it all on
Rumsfeld,” said Smullen, who was Powell’s chief of staff until last
fall, when he became director of national security studies at Syracuse
University.“Every time Rumsfeld goes through one of these episodes,
people think it’s the end for him,” said Loren B. Thompson, a defense
analyst and consultant at the Lexington Institute with ties to the
Pentagon and defense contractors. “But he always ends up looking
vindicated. What we’re really facing in Iraq is a mop-up operation, and
as the mop-up continues and as we gradually sharpen our intelligence and
train Iraqi security forces, Rumsfeld is going to look better and
better. In the end, it will look like he understood the occupation of
Iraq better than most of his critics did.”
As one Army general put it: “Rummy is a survivor.”
Rumsfeld declined to be interviewed for this article, and his
spokesman declined to provide any comment.
Speaking for Bush, White House communications director Dan
Bartlett said Friday, “The president ignores the Washington pastime of
armchair quarterbacking with perfect hindsight. The president has all
the faith and confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld that he did on the day he
announced him for the position.”
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the difficulties
of postwar Iraq have not led to a reduction in the role played by
Rumsfeld and the Defense Department. “Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon had
the lead and have the lead in postwar reconstruction because . . . we
wanted a way to unify the command of the forces and the civilian
reconstruction effort,” Rice said in an interview Friday. “It’s a very,
very tough job, but he’s managed it well, the president believes he’s
done it well, and when problems have come up, he’s moved to fix them.”
Nor, she said, has the White House been taken aback by the cost
and difficulty of the Iraq occupation. “Yes, this is really challenging,
it’s really challenging for all of us, and Don has got a heavy part of
the burden,” she said. “But everybody knows what it is we’re trying to
do, and everybody knows how important this is, and everybody knows this
is a chance to change history.”
Yet, the difficulties in Iraq have diminished Rumsfeld’s standing
within the administration, according to people familiar with its inner
workings, with a reduction in Rumsfeld’s operating latitude. Unhappiness
with Rumsfeld’s freewheeling style — he has been known to interject
himself in issues usually considered beyond the purview of a secretary
of defense — had been building within parts of the administration,
officials said.
But it was the Pentagon’s handling of postwar Iraq that really
hurt Rumsfeld’s position, according to some administration officials.
Asked about this, a senior White House official said it was “patently
false” that Rumsfeld had somehow been ordered by the White House to
better coordinate his policy initiatives with other parts of the
administration.
‘HE’S VERY DEFENSIVE’
Unhappiness with Rumsfeld flared on Capitol Hill months before
the invasion of Iraq, when Warner stood up at a meeting of Republican
senators with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and
complained that Rumsfeld was neither cooperating nor consulting with the
Senate. Warner told Card that he had never seen anything like it in 25
years in the Senate.
Now, with casualties in Iraq mounting and lawmakers growing
agitated about the costs of occupation and reconstruction, the strains
have become more pronounced, even as the administration continues to
hold strong Republican support on Capitol Hill for its overall policy
goals in Iraq.
Even Rumsfeld’s GOP backers chafe at the way he interacts with
Congress. “I think his legislative affairs shop is awful,” said one
Republican senator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It serves
him so poorly. Don Rumsfeld can’t be personally blamed for all of that.
But the combination of his personality, which some people find
condescending and prickly and a little offensive — Rumsfeld himself
doesn’t have any time for criticism — and the fact that the groundwork
hasn’t been laid by a good legislative affairs staff, has created some
problems.”
Graham, the South Carolina Republican, said that among his
colleagues, “there’s some belief that he’s reluctant to admit that
things are off-track when they seem to be off-track. He’s very
defensive.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a West Point graduate and former officer
in the 82nd Airborne Division, said Rumsfeld was “critically important
to a spectacular conventional military victory in Iraq.” But Reed said
the real question now is whether Rumsfeld is committed to reaching out
to other countries “in a way that encourages allies to join us” in
managing the occupation.
While the administration says it wants a U.N. resolution aimed at
winning more foreign troops and money, Reed said, “The rhetoric is not
matched by the body language and all the things that have to go into
getting people to cooperate with you.”
Others on Capitol Hill are not as pessimistic. Rep. Heather A.
Wilson (R-N.M.), an Air Force veteran who later served on the staff of
the National Security Council in George H.W. Bush’s administration, said
that “over the last 10 days, I’ve seen the administration make the
changes and commitments they need to make in order to be successful in
the long term.”
Wilson adds that her old comrades in the Air Force tend to like
Rumsfeld’s direct style, a sentiment that others in Congress second.
Graham said, “I find him refreshing in a stiff-collared town. . . . He’s
the right guy at the right time.”
Likewise, said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), “I have immense regard for
Don Rumsfeld and his staff.”
‘A BLOODLETTING’
Iraq has raised new doubts about Rumsfeld among some officers
from the Army and Marines, the two services still operating there.
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former head of the U.S.
Central Command who also served the Bush administration as Middle East
envoy, sharply criticized the Pentagon’s handling of postwar Iraq in a
speech before the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association
10 days ago. He received an enthusiastic response from hundreds of
military officers present.
In the Army, there are deep worries that the Iraq occupation
could do long-term damage to the service. Of the 10 active-duty Army
divisions, nine will have all or parts deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan
this year or next.
“The Army is strained and stressed,” Gen. John Keane, the
service’s No. 2 officer, said Thursday.
The major worry, according to some in the Army, is that repeated
deployments to Iraq will persuade the backbone of the service — seasoned
sergeants and younger officers — to leave in mid-career instead of
serving a full 20 years. There already is talk that some of those now
serving in Iraq will come home, only to be sent back in 2005.
“The last time we had people doing combat tours every other year
was Vietnam,” one defense expert said. “The impact on soldiers and
families was great. A lot of good junior officers and mid-grade NCOs
[noncommissioned officers] walked. This decimated the rising leadership
and broke the force.”
The state of the Army reserves is a special worry, and the
reserves are adept at conveying that concern to Congress.
“Unless there’s adaptation in the reserves, there’s going to be a
bloodletting,” with thousands of reservists declining to reenlist, said
Graham, who serves as an officer in the Air Force Reserve. He said he is
introducing legislation — along with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)
— to radically improve the health benefits for reservists, and to reduce
the costs to civilian employers of reservists deployed overseas.
Rumsfeld’s critics acknowledge that if conditions in Iraq improve
in six months-with a constitution signed, an election plan underway,
U.S. casualties drastically reduced, and thousands of troops returning
home-Rumsfeld’s legacy is probably secure. But they say that he has a
track record of sticking too long with incorrect assumptions about the
speed of recovery and brushing aside problems such as looting. Rumsfeld
has resisted adding troops to the forces in Iraq on grounds they are not
needed and that more responsibility must be turned over to the Iraqis.
So if parts of Iraq are still combat zones next spring, with the
Army apparently mired in a seemingly never-ending fight, then Rumsfeld
may wind up remembered as a principal architect of a foreign policy
disaster, according to some military experts and lawmakers.
“He is absolutely convinced that he is right, that his view is
correct, so all the rest of this stuff that is floating around is kind
of noise, a lot of which he just dismisses out of hand, or he
rationalizes somehow as consistent with this plan of his,” White said.
Robert S. Gelbard, a former U.S. diplomat with experience in
several peacekeeping operations, said he is puzzled by Rumsfeld’s
insistence that no additional troops are needed to improve security in
Iraq. “What’s hard to figure out is the continued adamant statements
that there’s no need for additional troops,” he said. “That is utterly
perplexing, given the security situation there.”
The view among many in the administration, Congress and military
interviewed for this article was that Iraq likely would simmer down in
the coming months and that security conditions would improve, in part,
they said, because of the extraordinary efforts by the 122,000 troops
deployed there.
“I suspect he will be saved by the strong backs and the
creativity of the Army soldiers in Iraq,” one White House aide said.
“And that’s an incredible irony.”
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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