The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
The Defense Secretary We Have
By William Kristol
The Washington Post
© December 15, 2004
"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."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
in a town hall meeting with soldiers
at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, Dec. 8.
Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army.
It's performed a lot better in this war
than the secretary of defense has. President
Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for
now with the defense secretary we have,
perhaps because he doesn't want to make a
change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi
elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not
the defense secretary Bush should want to
have for the remainder of his second term.
Contrast the magnificent performance of our
soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of
Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer
to Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army
National Guard:
"Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has
been pressing ahead to produce the armor
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 General
Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and
certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to
the fact that not every vehicle has the degree
of armor 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 armor, "It's
interesting." In fact, "if you think about
it, you can have all the armor in the world
on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And
you can have an up-armored humvee and it
can be blown up." Good point. Why have armor
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 General Franks and General
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 we have had
for postwar stabilization. Leave aside the
fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected
that he would need a quarter-million troops
on the ground for that task -- and that his
civilian superiors had mistakenly promised
him that 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
our 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
Sept. 11.
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 defense 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 Lt. 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 color or creed. . . . They are
United States Marines, representing all that
is best in soldierly virtues."
These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary
than the one we have.
The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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