Rumsfeld's war going nicely

9 Dec, 2001 08:56 AM7 mins to read

ROGER FRANKLIN shows how Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has gone from derision to applause.

NEW YORK - As a voracious bibliophile with a taste for history, United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is no doubt familiar with what one of America's Founding Fathers had to say about the business of turning ploughshares into swords.

"There never was a good war," Benjamin Franklin observed, "nor a bad peace."

The quote, would draw one of his trademark guffaws - the sort that dilute the acid of mockery with genial derision and which are often heard these days when he takes centre stage at Pentagon press briefings.

September 11 was an American tragedy. But for Rumsfeld, who ended up in his job by default, it has been a fortunate war.

To understand why, one need only recall the misery that was Rumsfeld's lot right up until the moment when the third of four hijacked jets slammed into the Pentagon, where the man now supervising the resulting war was at his desk as a fireball erupted outside his window.

Up until that morning, if the new man at the Defence Department had been merely loathed and detested, it would have been an improvement.

On the right, former Senator Dan Coates, the scripture-quoting Republican troglodyte from Indiana whose rejection of the post opened the door for Rumsfeld, was dismayed by his substitute's refusal to declare a jihad on what another sneering, self-appointed field marshal in God's private army branded "fags in fatigues."

On the left, where defence spending is seldom popular, he was derided as the latest in the defence industry's long line of conservative shills.

To the generals and Pentagon bureaucrats, Rumsfeld epitomised the most dangerous variety of civilian meddler - the arrogant innocent who refuses to heed the warriors' counsel about the sort of weapons the US should be buying.

After accepting his cabinet post when Coates' refused to serve - and, according to some, doing so only as a favour to Bush the Elder - Rumsfeld ordered a sweeping review of all major weapons programmes.

His PR flacks put it about that the new man intended to weed out the "golden turkeys", the weapon systems that do more damage to the public purse than they are ever likely to inflict on any enemy at which they are aimed.

Nonsense, said the generals, who decried the review as an attempt to buy time while Rumsfeld grappled with the rudiments of defence policy and procurement. In their view, Rumsfeld lacked the grey matter to succeed in that endeavour.

And then there was the problem of making sure that President George W. Bush's reputation for being less than bright did not cast too dark a shadow over the entire Administration. Bush certainly didn't make the job any easier.

Early this year, when Rumsfeld's review of the national arsenal was in progress, Bush told the Citadel military college that an ongoing "revolution in war technology" might allow the Pentagon "to skip a generation of weapons".

Professional military types asked what he could possibly be getting at.

Rumsfeld seemed not to know.

When pressed, he bristled, which only confirmed his growing reputation for being both difficult and out of his depth.

Meanwhile, the generals launched a sneak attack on their boss by informing Congress that the Armed Services needed an additional $US10 billion to supplement the $US310 billion that former President Bill Clinton had thought sufficient to keep America's war machine fighting fit. What the brass didn't do was tell Rumsfeld before filing the request.

Rumsfeld shrugged off the calculated insult as best he could. No, he said, he wasn't surprised, because that was how the Washington game was played. That was the cue for the Pentagon to twist the knife.

"Secretary Rumsfeld understands the give and take," gloated Vice-Admiral Craig Quigley.

Now, turn the clock forward to October. It is the same Pentagon briefing room, the same Quigley. Was there any friction between Rumsfeld and the joint chiefs of staff, the admiral was asked.

None whatsoever, Quigley responded, adding that the Defence Secretary was better than competent - he was "often an inspiration".

The quote demonstrates just how much things had changed for Rumsfeld. The war was progressing slowly, and its conduct was coming under fire.

Yet the generals were now standing behind the leader they had detested just weeks before. As the cliche goes, September 11 changed everything.

Rumsfeld's actions as the Pentagon burned won him a lot of respect. While the President's fearful handlers shuttled him around the country aboard Air Force One in search of a safe bunker, Rumsfeld headed straight for the flames.

After labouring side by side with rescuers, he was the first Administration official to speak to the press and soothe the anxieties of an anxious nation.

Later, when Bush addressed the country, it was as if he had simply picked up his aide's script.

That the 69-year-old Rumsfeld should have risen to the challenge of the moment with such aplomb should not have come as such a surprise.

He served in the Defence Department under President Ford in 1976 and on panels that examined defence priorities. He has been a regular consultant at the Rand Institute, the Air Force's favourite think-tank. To friends, he was ferociously loyal.

And despite the stories the brass had been spreading about his lack of nous, the fact that Rumsfeld had served as a congressman in the sixties was an indication that he knew his way around Washington.

Similarly, his decision to bail out of the Nixon White House, where he had worked with Henry Kissinger, after catching the first, early whiffs of corruption spoke volumes about his political savvy.

Said Kissinger: "I'm glad he is not my enemy."

Kissinger also called him "the most ruthless son of a bitch I have ever met". From the man who mounted the secret war in Cambodia, high praise indeed.

And Rumsfeld is tough, too, always has been.

It's that toughness, along with a disdain for euphemism, which has endeared him to an America at war.

"You bet we want to kill bin Laden," has been his blunt summation of the initial goal for the US offensive against terrorism.

Nor has he shied from urging his countrymen to reconcile themselves to a long, bloody and foggy war.

Blunt, bloody-minded and to the point, his remarks about "not picking this fight" and praising the military, were the antithesis of Pentagon pronouncements during the Clinton years.

Back then, tough questions were apt to be smothered with soggy waffle. It was military strategy as conceived by lawyers and PR operatives - and it continued into the early days of the Afghan campaign, when one of the CIA's killer drones spotted the fleeing convoy of a Taleban leader and the generals followed standing procedure by asking a military attorney if it was legally safe to open fire.

By the time the answer came through, the target was gone and an opportunity lost.

"We screwed up. Believe me, it won't happen again," Rumsfeld explained with the selective candour that has made him, along with Britain's more eloquent Tony Blair, one of the two chief voices spelling out the goals of an habitually tongue-tied President.

A similar measure of bluntness has also won over the press. Review the transcripts of the Pentagon briefings he conducts at least several times every week, and the following sentence is a staple: "I could tell you [dramatic pause], but I'm not going to."

Rather than anger, the remark usually elicits laughter.

How can he get away with that sort of stonewalling? Again, it is the judicious application of good-natured contempt.

"Thousands of Americans were killed, and they were killed by people who have vowed to do it again and again," was the way Rumsfeld silenced a reporter who demanded to know why he was being denied specific information about troop movements and battle plans.

"We can't let them do that," he continued.

"We need a peaceful, stable world for this economy of ours, for people to have opportunity, for people to be able to go to school and know their kids are going to come home safely. And that's why we're doing this. We're not doing this to be retaliating or for retribution or revenge."

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