[A-List] US military: the Rumsfeld agenda

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Pentagon hawk at war with his own side

Donald Rumsfeld, abrasive civilian determined to run Iraq conflict his way

Matthew Engel in Washington
Thursday March 13, 2003
The Guardian

The news that the British had been deeply upset by remarks made by Donald
Rumsfeld caused some bemusement in Washington yesterday. "Where have you
guys been the last two years?" one official asked incredulously. "Haven't
you watched him operate?"

After more than two years back as defence secretary, a job he first held
more than a quarter of a century ago, Mr Rumsfeld has made himself perhaps
the most controversial of all the main players in an administration that
thrives on stirring up trouble.

But the truly significant argument about him does not go on in public. It
does not concern his occasional cack-handed forays into international
diplomacy, does not even concern his support for the forthcoming war. Mr
Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon in January 2001 with an agenda which has
remained essentially in place despite the massive change in circumstances.

This has created animosity at the Pentagon that people on both sides of the
argument acknowledge is unprecedented in the post-Vietnam era. That means
that if the Iraq war is won quickly and brilliantly, it will be Mr
Rumsfeld's triumph. It also means that if anything goes wrong, however
small, there are an awful lot of people anxious to ensure that will be seen
as his fault. In principle, this will be George Bush's war. In execution, it
will be Rummy's.

The evidence we have is that, among the top echelon, Mr Rumsfeld was behind
only his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and a shade ahead of vice-president Dick
Cheney in pushing for a war on Iraq as soon as possible after September 11.
But Iraq is not dead-centre of his mission at the Pentagon. For him, the job
is not about one war. It is about ensuring all wars are fought his way, with
complete civilian control, even on technicalities long assumed to be the
prerogative of the generals.

"In nine months at the Pentagon, I don't think I heard the word Iraq
mentioned more than twice," said Dan Goure, now an analyst at the Lexington
Institute, but formerly a senior member of the Rumsfeld transition team.

On the face of it, Mr Rumsfeld's comments on Tuesday were mild and
reasonable enough, indeed rather reassuring: acknowledging that Britain was
a sovereign country with its own parliament and that if the US had to invade
Iraq without British help, it would accept the situation.

As Rumsfeld comments go, it was hardly a top-grade gaffe. A couple of weeks
ago he was addressing a gathering of international officials at the
Pentagon. "There are four countries that will never support us. Never,"
barked Mr Rumsfeld, before instantly creating his own new axis of evil:
"Cuba, Libya and Germany." "What's the fourth?" someone asked. "I forget the
fourth," he said, which was probably fortunate. Who knows who else he might
have offended?

These kind of comments make state department officials (many deeply opposed
to current policies, anyway) break into a cold sweat. But what appears to be
the real Rumsfeld rarely breaks into the public domain.

Many Americans, watching his stylish and folksy press conferences (Oh, my
goodness gracious! Henny-penny, the sky's going to fall!) , find him
thoroughly reassuring - seemingly more competent than the president and more
emollient than the vice-president. That is not his reputation inside his
department.

The whole truth will not emerge until after everyone has published their
memoirs, if then. But there is a clear sense that, when Mr Rumsfeld appears
on a podium with one of his senior generals, the light byplay may not
represent the real mood backstage. Traditionally, members of great comedy
double acts are meant to hate each other.

The policies he has instituted have in themselves caused enormous offence,
arguably necessary. But the ill-feeling has been compounded by his abrasive
manner with subordinates. He made few waves in his brief first term at the
Pentagon, under Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977, though it is remembered how
he rang the head of the secret service in fury after an agent touched him
lightly in a corridor.

But his reputation as a ferocious boss who ate subordinates for breakfast
pre-dates even that, to his time as a young congressman from Illinois, and
carried on into the decades he spent in business before his return to
government in 2001. Word from inside the Pentagon is that time has not
mellowed him, and that these days he can get thoroughly crabby even about
spelling mistakes. He is surrounded by people who are even more sharp-edged:
not so much the much-publicised Mr Wolfowitz as people on the next rung
down, like Douglas Feith and Stephen Cambone.

Crabbiness

Crabbiness with a purpose is not necessarily a vice, and the real judgment
of Mr Rumsfeld will hinge on the wisdom of his agenda. What makes him
unusual as defence secretary is that he came in with that agenda, evidently
formed when he served on various quasi-governmental commissions in the
1990s, about how the organisation needed to change.

This made him very different from, for instance, the three low-profile
occupants of the office under Bill Clinton, a president who for political
reasons was wary about taking on the armed forces, in which he had
conspicuously failed to serve.

"This time you had someone who came into office intent on changing the
department, and doing it with forethought," said Mr Goure. "Rumsfeld had a
very clear idea about how to reform the system on a whole host of issues:
management structure, cost accounting and acquisition of weapons as well as
the major elements of warfare, like missile defence and nuclear strategy.

"The military had had a long period of famine, and thought they were going
to get a Republican administration who were just going to write cheques," Mr
Goure said. "There was a struggle for the soul of national security, which
Rumsfeld won. Resoundingly."

However, the main casualty of that struggle was a rather large one: the US
army. Mr Rumsfeld thinks the army is resistant to change; the army brass in
return thought their new boss had no appreciation of the importance of
traditional conventional ground force. And they have had at least one major
success: there are now three times as many troops massing on Iraq's borders
than called for in the original plans six months ago.

The underlying bitterness cannot be hidden even by an instinctively
secretive organisation. A year ago, against all precedent, Mr Rumsfeld
announced the name of the next head of the army to replace General Eric
Shinseki, who does not retire until this summer, thus making him an instant
lame duck.

The general is himself regarded as a reformer but differed from his boss on
crucial military issues, such as the planned Crusader tank, which Mr
Rumsfeld scrapped behind his back. Gen Shinseki lingers, like the undead,
and last month launched an envenomed public dispute over the
administration's bland assurances about the limited cost of the war.

"It's been obvious all along that the civilian leadership of the Pentagon
are one side, and the military on the other," said Ted Galen Carpenter of
the Cato Institute. "Rumsfeld's deputies, and to some extent Rumsfeld
himself, exhibit almost a contempt for the uniformed hierarchy. The tension
is palpable even under these conditions, on multiple fronts, not just over
Iraq."

Events in Iraq will undoubtedly determine what happens next. Success will,
as ever, have a thousand fathers. "If things go badly," warns Mr Carpenter,
"the civilians will not accept the blame. They're going to blame inept
execution of their brilliant plan. The military won't take that lying down."
And, then, henny-penny, the sky really would fall.