RSS Feed MenuRobert Draper’s GQ account of fingerpointing by former Bush officials against Donald Rumsfeld is the media story of the week. Yet a quick tour of the conservative blogosphere finds it mentioned almost nowhere. Our good friend Allahpundit at HotAir.com has a brief synopsis, but other than that … blank, nothing, nada.
Which is a big shame. This is a piece conservatives need to read and understand – although for very different reasons from the reasons that have led liberals to read it with shocked fascination.
The liberal media reaction has focused on one titillating but ultimately not super interesting detail in the piece: a PowerPoint briefing for the president in which selected slides quoted passages from the Bible.
The slide that has everyone most buzzing shows a column of American tanks driving under the crossed sword gate in Baghdad alongside Isaiah 26:2, “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.” This biblical triumphalism strikes many as potentially bruising to Islamic sensitivities. Fair point. On the other hand – the slides were meant to be top secret, and had they remained that way, no bruising would have occurred.
Titillating as it is, the slideshow is not the part of the article that commands conservative attention.
That part is the part in which Bush aides unload on Rumsfeld personally.
“There was exasperation,” recalls a senior aide. “‘How much more are we going to have to endure? Why are we keeping this guy?’”
And:
“What Rumsfeld was most effective in doing,” says a former senior White House official, “was not so much undermining a decision that had yet to be made as finding every way possible to delay the implementation of a decision that had been made and that he didn’t like.” At meetings, he’d throw up every obstacle he could. “Rumsfeld would say, ‘Golly, we haven’t had time to read all of these documents! I mean, this is radical change!’ ” the official adds. “And then, if you suggested that maybe he should’ve read all the documents when everyone first got them a week ago, he’d say: ‘Well! I’ve been all over the world since then! What have you been doing?’ ”
And:
“In many ways,” says one of Bush’s national-security advisers, “Rumsfeld was more interested in being perceived to be in charge than actually being in charge.” When I repeated this quote to an administration official privy to Rumsfeld’s war efforts, this person’s eyes lit up. “One of the most fateful, knock-down-drag-outs was over postwar reconstruction,” says this official. “It was the question of who’d take charge, State or DoD. Rumsfeld made a presentation about chain of command. ‘If State takes over here, are you saying Tommy Franks is going to report to a State official? Mr. President, that’s not in the Constitution!’ ”
“I’m not saying State could have done any better,” this official says of the bungled reconstruction efforts. “But he owned it.”
That is, until he disowned it. In May 2003, six weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Bush decreed that newly appointed envoy to Iraq Paul Bremer would be reporting directly to the secretary of defense. But within seven months, according to Bremer’s book My Year in Iraq, Rumsfeld had completely washed his hands of the faltering reconstruction efforts.
And finally:
At times, this my-way-or-no-way approach could even come at the expense of his soldiers. Shortly before the Iraq invasion, King Abdullah II of Jordan decreed that warplanes could not overfly his country if they had previously flown over Israel. The king’s demand meant that U.S. fighters would need to make a multiple-hour detour before proceeding to their targets. Rumsfeld had himself been a fighter pilot and presumably recognized the absurdity of the detour, and so one NSC aide approached him during a meeting in the Situation Room as the matter was being discussed.
“Excuse me, Mr. Secretary,” said the aide. “I want you to know that Dr. Rice is prepared to call the king to get that restriction removed so that our kids don’t have to fly the extra two and a half or three hours.”
Rumsfeld looked up from his coffee. “When I need your help,” he said, “I’ll ask.”
The secretary did not ask for the help, and so his soldiers went the extra distance ….
Conservatives should be focused instead on a very different question – an unpleasant one, but one absolutely essential to our indispensable, inevitable but still postponed reckoning with the legacy of the Bush administration. The question is: Why did Iraq go so very badly wrong – and why, having gone wrong, did it take so ruinously wrong for the administration to shift to a more successful course? Conservatives rightly take pride and comfort in the achievements of the surge. But the surge does not banish all the antecedent questions about Iraq. The surge may have rescued the American position in Iraq from total disaster, but nobody would describe the present situation in Iraq as anything like satisfactory.
Many, many writers have reported on this history. No definitive answer has ever been reached. Definitiveness has eluded writers in part because there is so much blame to go around. Yet there is something else too, a special factor: the mysterious personality of Donald Rumsfeld. More than any other figure in the administration, Rumsfeld is elusive, his decision-making opaque, his motives inaccessible.
Draper shows us some of the technique by which Rumsfeld used power without leaving traces.
One of Rumsfeld’s other favorite tactics was obfuscation. “He was always bringing questions,” recalls a senior White House adviser of Rumsfeld. “Never answers.”
Imagine you are a general who has presented the secretary with a war plan requiring 300,000 men. Rumsfeld will incessantly push and probe: “Are you sure you need so many? Why?” The general did not achieve high rank by disregarding hints from his civilian superiors. “Maybe we can do with 260,000.” Really? Still so many? What if you omitted this factor or that?” “Call it 200,000.” That still seems awfully high … are you sure? OK, OK, 175,000. “Very well general, if that’s your military opinion, I respect it.”
If all goes well – brilliant. If anything goes wrong – well, the secretary was only asking questions.
Even this however does not quite capture the Rumsfeld method. After all: You can understand why Rumsfeld would wish to fight the Iraq war with the smallest possible force – and then why he might have been reluctant to admit error. These may have been wrong decisions, but they contained an inner rationality. Then there stories like this:
When Condoleezza Rice appointed Robert Blackwill to the Iraq Stabilization Group in 2003 to oversee that country’s rickety reconstruction efforts, Rumsfeld saw the new group as an encroachment and therefore elected to dispatch no DoD personnel to its meetings. Here was the Rumsfeld paradox in action— his need for control trumping his desire for information—and his own subordinates could see the cost. “The truth is,” recalls a former aide, “having people in the National Security Council is how you influence the NSC. So he would weaken himself by not having his eyes and ears there.”
This is a sub-example of a larger tendency that was present from the very beginning of the administration. Much of the National Security Council staff in the Bush administration was seconded from other agencies, especially State and CIA. These people brought with them the distinctive bureaucratic point of view of their home agencies, agencies that paid their salaries, determined their promotions, and to which they would ultimately return. Rumsfeld however refused to send DoD people to NSC. His thinking seemed to be: They worked for him, they should stay in his building. Result: NSC internal thinking did not take DoD points of view into account. The DoD became an external force and therefore inevitably a bureaucratic antagonist. In an effort to maximize his power, Rumsfeld cannibalized it. Henry Kissinger once described Rumsfeld as the most ferocious bureaucratic adversary he ever encountered. And unfortunately one of the characteristic vices of bureaucracies is to carry on bureaucratic warfare long after the issues at stake have been forgotten – indeed even to the detriment of what is supposedly the bureaucracy’s own core mission.
The record of the Rumsfeld years remains one of the highest obstacles to a Republican recovery. It’s hard to imagine how we can achieve that recovery without coming to some kind of reckoning with this record – even if only an inward, private reckoning that will enable us to avoid such mistakes in future. But you cannot reckon with what you won’t recognize.
dragonlady // May 21, 2009 at 10:27 am
j_mcdouglas, your comments are absolutely loathsome. Repubs and Dems may disagree on policies and philosophy, but for you to hurl personal attacks by categorizing the entire GOP as a bunch of bigots is quite self-revealing. It’s truly a spectacle to see someone try to pump up their own ideology and by extension, their self-image by demeaning others.
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 10:33 am
Re: Sinz54; 1:44 PM –Well… we’re never know, Sinz. Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re not; either way it’s alternate history, not reality. I gave my views in light of what was – in light of reality. (*SHRUG*)Re: Sinz54; 2:04 PM –”What should we do about Afghanistan-Pakistan?”And that’s the $64,000 question. (Pre-Inflation.) (*WINK*)I’m thinking “less is more” is about the best we can do, particularly in Afghanistan. Keep a low profile. Play whack-a-mole. (*SHRUG*) We’re just NOT going to turn Afghanistan into a “civilized” “real” country. It is what it is – tribal warlords… religious fanatics… opium lords and peasants… a bit too much “diversity” for the US or the West to “remake.” Pakistan…??? (*SIGH*) A different story. The thing is… short/mid/longterm… it’s INDIA we need as our friend and ally.As wasteful and long term counterproductive as it is, I see no choice but to basically keep to a carrot/stick approach heavily tilted to the Pakistani military.For what it’s worth… just based on the small amount of research I’ve done… it would be no picnic (and perhaps beyond our capacity) to forcibly disarm Pakistan in terms of their nukes.(*SHRUG*) (*FROWN*)”Is a pre-emptive strike still a good option to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities?”We simply don’t have access to that info, Sinz. I sure as hell hope so though! In any case, Israel would have to take the lead and the brunt of the backlash.I doubt they could pull it off without our cooperation… but again… we simply don’t have the factual knowledge to know for sure. (*SHRUG*)”If Iran test-fires a nuclear bomb, is any military option gone at that point?”No. Not at all. (BTW… how exactly would Iraq test a nuclear weapon? Think geography.) (*SHRUG*)BILL
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 11:01 am
Re: Danbmil99; 1:49 AM –”…the GOP managed to nominate a VP who DIDN’T KNOW THAT AFRICA WAS A CONTINENT.”Dan. I’m more of a sarcastic, condescending s.o.b than a name caller, but for you…Are you a frigg’n idiot…???Seriously. I’m not saying you can’t attack Palin… I’m just saying don’t sound like a damned fool via spreading nonsense like the above cut quote. (And especially not using all caps!)(*SNORT*)I’d be quite happy if Gov. Palin were President today; happier in fact than if my other choices included McCain as well as Obama.(*SHRUG*)Palin clearly has a much better grasp of real world as well as governmental economics than either the serving President or the Senator from Arizona – who admitted his ignorance… amazingly enough seemingly without much embarrassment after having spent decades as a congressman and senator.(*SIGH*)”But please, credentials count for something. Sarah Palin could not have become a law professor at Harvard. She is simply not cut from the same cloth.”Hmm… you know much about Woodrow Wilson? How’bout Carter? Annapolis? And HE had business experience too!I agree with you. I can’t see Palin as an academic. But I don’t take the same lesson from that as you do apparently. (*SHRUG*)”There is a strange, deep-seated anti-intellectualism in the DNA of the GOP.”Not so. Better to say there’s an entirely understandable and justifiable disdain for intellectualism that… er… ain’t all that “intellectual” if by “intellectual” you mean favoring the RIGHT POLICIES over the WRONG POLICIES.(*SMILE*) You familiar with Newt Gingrich? “Anti-intellectual…???” (*SNORT*)Dick Armey? Phil Gramm?Dan… seriously… at best you’re… er… oversimplifying.”Well, the last election shows…”That eight years of Bush, six of which featured an often corrupt and usually fiscally irresponsible RINO Congress, the beacon of Hope and Change couldn’t manage to win a Nixon or Reagan style landslide.(*SHRUG*)Dan. We’ve been over this. Over this and over this. You can’t beat something with nothing and in many respects… McCain was less than nothing as opposed to Obama.Hey. Maybe if Palin had been on the top of the ticket and had campaigned against both the RINOs (and Bushism) and Democrats as far as TARP and bailouts and Stimulus Plans were concerned President Obama would still be Senator Obama.Hey… it also could have worked out that Obama won emulating Johnson’s victory over Goldwater! We’ll never know. But at least there would have been a REPUBLICAN vs. DEMOCRAT presidential race as opposed to a “real” Democrat vs. John McCain (of the House of Bush) race.(*SHRUG*)We tried McCain in ‘08. Let’s try a conservative in ‘12 and see what happens. We KNOW what happened to McCain. BILL
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 11:05 am
Re: Dragonlady; wrote 34 minutes ago –I too notice we’re getting more cranks here. Perhaps they mistake NM for the Slate comments forum or perhaps online letters to the editor of the New York Times.(*CHUCKLE*)BILL
danbmil99 // May 21, 2009 at 11:46 am
sinz54: “danbmil99: Bush in 2000 had better credentials than Obama in 2008.”Actually, you have a point. I’d say it’s about a wash, though I do count executive experience as something important, so maybe GWB has an edge there. It’s certainly true that intellectuals can f* up a country (that guy from Georgia [the one near Russia] comes to mind).But the crux of my point stands, which is that Bush is anti-intellectual, and tended to hire people and trust them using his gut rather than his head. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Brownie come to mind as three examples of how that worked out for him. Not only did he have bad instincts when it came to picking people (Harriet Meyers for Supreme? Really?) — he also stuck with them way too long, when it was obvious to everyone else in the world that they were incompetent or worse. (lately rumors have circulated that he was laughing along with ‘Darth Vader’ jokes about Cheney towards the end…)As to Sarah P, all I can say is — really?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWZHTJsR4Bc
chephren // May 21, 2009 at 12:09 pm
It is terribly ironic to read this article. Frum, Bush’s former speechwriter, and for years a determined cheerleader for the war in Iraq, now proposes a “reckoning” for the errors of Rumsfeld? Excuse me? Where were you back in the day? The very qualities of Rumsfeld criticized in this post – obfuscation, ruthlessness, stubbornness, a talent for bureaucratic infighting – are the same ones he was celebrated for at the time of the invasion. I remember articles in Newsweek and elsewhere about “Rumsfeld’s Rules”, about what a tough, take-no-prisoners guy he was. It was Don’s way or the highway, and that was how the administration – and the conservative press – liked it. Conservatives loved the guy. And now they’re supposed to ‘reckon’ with the errors of Rumsfeld’s ways? Are Conservatives ‘reckoning’ with domestic spying without warrants? With trashing Clinton’s budget surpluses and doubling the national debt? With the marginalization of their own party? Whole lot of reckoning to be done around here, I’d say.
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Re: Danbmil99; 11:46 AM –”But the crux of my point stands…”(*GRIN*) You keep on telling yourself that, Dan! (*WINK*)”…Bush is anti-intellectual, and tended to hire people and tust them using his gut rather than his head.” But… but… but… what of the neocon cabal…?!?! “Anti-intellectual…?!?!” The neocons WERE the intellectuals…!!!Rumsfeld attended Princeton on academic scholarship as well as receiving a NROTC scholarship. Last time I checked, Princeton’s one of them thar poison ivy league university type… er… places. You know… the kind of places really… er… smart people… er… go.Cheney got into Yale (having grown up in Wyoming!) and while it’s true he partied himself out of there pretty damned quickly the guy did go on to get a BA, Masters, and start work on a Doctorate which he never finished.Seriously, dude… some of these inferences you’re throwing around about other peoples intelligence just… er… doesn’t wash.Again, Dan… and I’m trying to TEACH you something here… it’s not that conservatives are “anti-intellectual,” it’s that we’re “anti-bullshit.”Me? I follow Charles Murray and James Q. Wilson, Camile Paglia and…(*SMILE*) You get the idea. Do you get the point…???Krugman has a Nobel prize. OK. He’s still wrong far more often than he’s right. Tom Friedman has what… three Pulitzer prizes…? Half the time I just roll my eyes when I read his ever changing as the wind blows recycled output. Is Friedman a smart, knowledgeable guy? Sure. Is Krugman? Sure – and once he starts mixing numbers and letters he’s sure to impress. (*SMILE*) Still… again… the disdain for CERTAIN “intellectuals” is based upon how “right” one thinks they are.Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’d guess the average liberal arts conservative respects the average engineering student or even business student (anyone who has to do math!) more than the average liberal arts liberal. If so, does that make the average liberal arts liberal “anti-intellectual?”"…(Harriet Meyers for Supreme? Really?)…”I’m with you there, Dan! As I like to put it…”…yeah… I knew Bush had lost his frigg’n mind when he tried to appoint his third grade art teacher to a seat on the Supreme Court.”(*SMILE*) (*HANDSHAKE*)Finally… as to your clip…(*SNORT*)Com’on… at least be intellectually honest; that was a pro-McCain “From side of the Party” reporter serving as a mouthpiece for the McCain/Frum side of the GOP.(*SMILE*) (*SNICKER*)BILL
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Re: Chephren; 12:09 PM –”I remember articles in Newsweek and elsewhere about “Rumsfeld’s Rules”, about what a tough, take-no-prisoners guy he was.”Yep. I remember those days too. Hell… remember the SNL skits that basically GLORIFIED both Rummy and Cheney (and even laughed WITH Bush as opposed to AT Bush) following 9/11?(*SIGH*)Remember Rumsfeld refusing to be taken to a secure location in the moments after the Pentagon was hit (with no one knowing if follow-up attacks were imminent) and instead physically helping with the wounded…?I do.A nation of Rummy’s may screw up, but, yeah… a nation of Frums… worrisome indeed.BILL
danbmil99 // May 21, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Ignoring all the pointless trollbait –Let me rephrase. I agree credentials can be bs. What differentiates say Obama from say Palin, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush, is a combination of intelligence, a reasoned temperament, and plain old common sense.When a team fumbles as many balls as the last admin did, it’s a pointless exercise in futility to argue for their competence.And Sarah Palin as President… Really?
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Re: Danbmil99; 2:44 PM –Well… I don’t know what you mean by “trollbait,” but I notice you keep on backing away from your original argument.(*WINK*)In any case, even if I grant you the “style over substance” argument with “Professor” Obama vs. “Palin the Wolf Killer,” I certainly wouldn’t put them in the same club resume wise absent Obama’s political victory to win the presidency.Palin is – and was – a Governor. She had actual executive responsibilities. Obama was a freshman U.S. Senator, on junior member of a “club” of 100 where few exercise individual power in a way where one can easily measure any result other than pork coming into a particular state.(*SHRUG*)As to Rumsfeld and Cheney….(*SNORT*)Jeez… using YOUR criteria Rummy and Darth stand head and shoulders over Obama. I’d love to see a debate between Obama and Biden vs. Rummy and Darth!(*SMILE*)As to Bush…(*BILL EXISTS THE BUILDING*)(*CHUCKLE*)Ya got me.BILL