| |
Rumsfeld and the 'long, hard
slog'
By David Isenberg
 As
just about everyone now knows, on October 16 US
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote a short memo
- a longstanding practice of his - to four of his
closest subordinates, Generals Dick Meyers and Peter
Pace, the chairman and vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, and Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, deputy
secretary of defense and undersecretary of defense for
policy.
The subject was the global "war on
terrorism" and the questions, in typical Rumsfeld style,
were direct and to the point. Are we winning or losing?
Is the Department of Defense changing fast enough to
deal with the new 21st century environment? Can a big
institution change fast enough? Is the United States
government changing fast enough?
Considering
that Rumsfeld has been virtually a one man band dragging
a frequently kicking and screaming Pentagon towards the
promised land, ie, the bright, shiny, "Revolution in
Military Affairs" which advocates claim will enable the
US, with a transformed, "net-centric" military, to
defeat opponents with little fuss or muss. These are
remarkable questions; both for their candor and the
tacit acknowledgement that perhaps there are other,
better ways to do things.
A case in point is
Rumsfeld's almost plaintive question, "Are the changes
we have and are making too modest and incremental? My
impression is that we have not yet made truly bold
moves, although we have made many sensible, logical
moves in the right direction, but are they enough?"
As many commentators have noted, if former
defense secretary Robert McNamara had asked similar
questions back in the 1960s, the US war in Vietnam might
have ended far differently. For example, by 1967
McNamara believed that the US would not win in Vietnam,
yet he said nothing. The war lasted eight more years and
cost tens of thousands more lives. It was not until 1995
that he admitted that his public certitude was a veneer,
that architects of the war policy "were wrong, terribly
wrong".
In any event, Rumsfeld's memo was
promptly leaked to USA Today and published on October
22. Much of the ensuing commentary has focused on the
memo as an example that things are getting worse in
Iraq, and around the world, in the war against al-Qaeda
- more than the Bush administration claims. And, to be
sure, the memo does put a speed bump in the path of the
Bush administration's public relations campaign that
postwar Iraq is progressing nicely and that the media
are exaggerating the setbacks.
But Rumsfeld has
asked some important questions, and policymakers should
seek to provide some honest answers.
Rumsfeld
wrote: "Today we lack metrics to know if we are winning
or losing the global 'war on terror'. Are we capturing,
killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists
every day than the madrassas [religious schools]
and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and
deploying against us?"
The short answer to that
is that we do not, in fact, lack the metrics. The metric
is in the daily news reports of casualties in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The bombings Sunday and Monday in Baghdad
at the International Committee of the Red Cross and
Iraqi police stations were the latest sign that
terrorists are in plentiful supply.
One might
argue that this is just one country, albeit
exceptionally militarized and strife-ridden and doesn't
reflect the overall picture. But consider some numbers
from a new paper released by the Cato Institute.
According to the State Department, in 1998 there were
274 total terrorist incidents worldwide, 111 (41 percent
of which were anti-US). In 2001, there were 355 total
terrorist incidents worldwide, 220 (62 percent) of which
were anti-US.
"Clearly, the United States was a
lightening rod for terrorism even before September 11.
Given that fact and given that even [Osama] bin Laden's
hatred of the United States is largely driven by US
policies, a vital component of US national security
policy must be to stem the tide of vehement
anti-American sentiment. That is especially true in the
Middle East, which is an incubator and recruiting pool
for radical Islamic terrorists."
It follows from
this that if terrorists attack the US for what it does,
as opposed to what is stands for, then the "war on
terror" is as much a matter of diplomacy and foreign
policy as war fighting. Thus, the State Department
should assume a far bigger role. Or, as the New York
Times editorialized on October 24, "We have also
challenged the wisdom of giving the Pentagon a leading
role in matters it knows little about, like
nation-building and setting foreign policy. It was Mr
Rumsfeld who aggressively seized much of that turf and
who brushed aside doubts about rushing into a war of
choice with Iraq when so much remained to be done on
al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Now he appears to be
acknowledging some of the same concerns. Better late
than never."
Another useful metric can be found
in public opinion. On that front, the 2003 Pew Global
Attitudes Project found that less than one-quarter of
respondents in Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and Jordan
said they support the "war on terrorism".
Perhaps the most striking language in the memo
was its sense of a prolonged war. Rumsfeld wrote, "Does
the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop
the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting
relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we
are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop
terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our
cost is billions against the terrorists' cost of
millions."
Toward the end of the memo he wrote,
"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in
Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will
be a long, hard slog."
For a defense secretary
who has been somewhat obsessed with transforming a Cold
War military into one that fights quick, decisive wars,
this is an admission that the US is fighting a war of
attrition. And for a society accustomed to instant
gratification, that isn't a welcome message.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information
on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
