The great survivor of the Bush administration, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has been facing a new wave of criticism from across the political spectrum. Now William Kristol, a leading neo-conservative though never a fan, has joined the critics with a vengeance in an article that has provoked widespread comment.
"As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They're not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
- US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a troop rally at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, on December 8th, in response to soldiers' complaints that their armoured personnel carriers are inadequately armoured and that many feel they have to use metal scrap to reinforce them.
Actually, the US has a pretty terrific army. It's performed a lot better in this war on Iraq than has the Secretary of Defence. President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the Defence Secretary he has, perhaps because he doesn't want to make a change until after the January 30th Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the Defence Secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term?
Contrast the magnificent performance of US soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer to Specialist Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard:
"Since the Iraq conflict began, the army has been pressing ahead to produce the armour necessary at a rate that they believe - it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.
"I can assure you that Gen Schoomaker and the leadership in the army and certainly Gen Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armour that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip."
So the army is in charge. "They" are working at it.
Rumsfeld? He happens to hang out in the same building: "I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon . . . And that is what the army has been working on." Not "that is what we have been working on".
Rather, "that is what the army has been working on". The buck stops with the army.
At least the topic of those conversations in the Pentagon isn't boring. Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who have been cobbling together their own armour: "It's interesting." In fact, "if you think about it, you can have all the armour in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an un-armoured Humvee and it can be blown up."
Good point. Why have armour at all? Incidentally, can you imagine if John Kerry had made such a statement a couple of months ago?
It would have been (rightly) a topic of scorn and derision among my fellow conservatives, and not just among conservatives.
Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier last week, when asked about troop levels? "The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control."
Really? Well, "the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that Gen Franks and Gen Abizaid wanted".
Leave aside the fact that the issue is not "the number of troops we had for the invasion", but rather the number of troops the US had for post-war stabilisation.
Leave aside the fact that Gen Tommy Franks had projected he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task - and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him tens of thousands of international troops would be available.
Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003.
And leave aside the fact that if US generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, this is a consequence of Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the size of the military after September 11th. In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general, or set of generals, but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.
Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week, after a fashion: "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine." Except, he fails to take responsibility.
All defence secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments.
But have any so breezily dodged responsibility, and so glibly passed the buck?
In Sunday's New York Times, John F. Burns quoted from the weekly letter to the families of his troops by Lieut Col Mark A. Smith, an Indiana state trooper who now commands the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, stationed just south of Baghdad:
"Ask yourself, how in a land of extremes, during times of insanity, constantly barraged by violence, and living in conditions comparable to the stone ages, your marines can maintain their positive attitude, their high spirit, and their abundance of compassion?"
Col Smith's answer: "They defend a nation unique in all of history: One of principle, not personality; one of the rule of law, not landed gentry; one where rights matter, not privilege or religion or colour or creed . . . They are United States Marines, representing all that is best in soldierly virtues."
Those soldiers deserve a better Defence Secretary. - (LA Times Washington Post Service)
William Kristol is editor of the Weekly Standard