WASHINGTON - Despite White House efforts
to put an end to the controversy, the battle over
the fate of US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld shows little sign of abating. The
outcome, which is by no means certain, could
determine the trajectory of US policy in key areas
- including Iraq, Iran and even China - through
the remaining two and a half years of George W
Bush's presidency.
While the unprecedented
calls by six retired generals for his resignation
have focused primarily on his competence,
management style and strategy for invading and
occupying Iraq, Rumsfeld's departure would almost
certainly cripple the coalition
of
neo-conservative and aggressive nationalist war
hawks in and around the administration for the
remainder of Bush's term.
That is why the
hawks outside the administration, led by the
neo-conservative editorial page of the Wall Street
Journal, appear anxious to persuade Bush that the
current campaign against his defense secretary is
really aimed at him.
"On Friday Mr Bush
said he still has every confidence [in Rumsfeld],"
the Journal stated. "We suspect the president
understands that most of those calling for Mr
Rumsfeld's head are really longing for his."
Teamed with his former protege and
longtime close friend, Vice President Dick Cheney,
Rumsfeld has enjoyed remarkable influence over US
foreign policy, as well as military operations,
for most of the past five years.
Indeed,
within five hours of the September 11, 2001,
attacks on New York and the Pentagon itself, it
was Rumsfeld who was the first to suggest that the
United States respond by attacking Iraq, as well
as al-Qaeda. According to contemporaneous notes
taken by an aide, he called for the US to "go
massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
Like Cheney, he has also been a steadfast
hawk on Syria, Iran and China, and his efforts
greatly to expand the Pentagon's role in covert
action at the expense of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and in dispensing military aid to
foreign allies at the expense of the State
Department have given his department unprecedented
influence in bilateral relations with friends and
foes alike.
Given the ruckus raised over
Rumsfeld's performance among the military brass -
and, for that matter, on Capitol Hill - any
successor likely to be confirmed by the Senate
will almost certainly have to be less hawkish and
not nearly as closely linked to Cheney. This would
deprive the vice president, who was clearly the
most important influence on foreign policy during
Bush's first term, of his most important and
effective ideological and operational ally.
In fact, most of the candidates who have
surfaced as potential successors - in particular,
Ambassador to Germany Dan Coates; Senate Armed
Services Committee chairman John Warner; and
former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage
(who last week called for direct negotiations with
Iran) - are considered "realists". While
conservative, they are much more inclined to defer
to the uniformed military and their State
Department colleagues.
The only exception
among potential Rumsfeld replacements is Senator
Joseph Lieberman, a strongly pro-Israel Democrat
who favors a policy of confrontation with Tehran.
The current round of attacks on Rumsfeld
began last month when retired army Major-General
Paul Eaton, who had been in charge of training the
Iraqi military during the first year of the
occupation, criticized his former boss in a New
York Times column as "incompetent strategically,
operationally, and tactically".
His blast
was followed last week by an anguished column in
Time magazine by retired Marine Corps
Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold, the top
operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff
before the invasion, who, after criticizing his
own failure to speak out in advance against the
attack on Iraq, alluded to the lack of first-hand
combat experience of many of the hawks.
"My sincere view is that the commitment of
our forces to this fight was done with a
casualness and swagger that are the special
province of those who have never had to execute
these missions - or bury the results," he wrote.
Other retired generals, including
Major-General John Batiste, who commanded the 1st
Infantry Division in Iraq and served as top
military aide to former deputy defense secretary
Paul Wolfowitz; Major-General Charles Swannack,
who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq,
and army Major-General John Riggs, weighed in with
their own critiques, as did two retired generals:
the former chief of Central Command, marine
General Anthony Zinni, and former North Atlantic
Treaty Organization commander General Wesley
Clark, who had called on Rumsfeld to step down as
long as two years ago.
At the same time,
former secretary of state Colin Powell, whose
chief of staff, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, has
accused Rumsfeld and Cheney of leading a "cabal"
that circumvented the official policymaking
process to take foreign policy in a radical
direction, also accused the Pentagon of making
"some serious mistakes" in Iraq, although Powell,
himself a retired general and former chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not call for
Rumsfeld to go.
In the face of this
onslaught - which, according to the dissenters, is
likely to be followed by statements from other
retired senior officers - Bush issued a statement
on Friday insisting that Rumsfeld "has my full
support and deepest appreciation". At the same
time, the Pentagon sent out a memorandum to a
group of former military commanders and civilian
analysts who often appear on television talk shows
about what they could say in Rumsfeld's defense.
Sure enough, retired Central Command chief
General Tommy Franks, who led the Iraq campaign,
and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General
Richard Myers - both of whom had been implicitly
criticized by the dissenters for deferring too
much to Rumsfeld's wishes - came to his defense,
as did the current Joint Chiefs chairman, marine
General Peter Pace, whose remarks, however,
curiously stressed Rumsfeld's "dedication ...
patriotism and ... work ethic" - attributes that
were never in doubt.
Three other generals
who appeared on the Sunday morning television talk
shows in the US also insisted that Rumsfeld should
not be forced out, although their praise was
remarkably faint. Indeed one, retired air force
Major-General Don Shepperd, said the Pentagon had
made "some severe mistakes" in Iraq, while retired
army General James Marks confirmed reports that
senior officers had requested more forces during
the invasion "at a very critical point in the war"
and been denied.
Their lack of enthusiasm
helped illustrate the loss of credibility - and
authority - Rumsfeld and his fellow hawks have
suffered with the uniformed military, a trend that
was described at length in a Journal article on
Monday, "Rumsfeld's control of military policy
appears to weaken". It noted, among other things,
that senior officers are growing increasingly
inclined to ignore or publicly contradict
Rumsfeld's policy preferences, such as limiting
military exchanges with China.
Even as
Rumsfeld was insisting last month that Syria was
facilitating the training and entry of "foreign
fighters" into Iraq, Central Command chief General
John Abizaid told Congress that Damascus was
cooperating with US efforts to stop infiltration
across the border.
Even Rumsfeld's
supporters on Capitol Hill are less than
enthusiastic. Asked to comment on the controversy
over the weekend, Warner, normally an
administration loyalist but who is also very close
to the brass, stated simply that he believed "that
the decision whether to keep Secretary Rumsfeld is
up to the president".
