R7

"Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

My Photo
Name:
Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Right-To-Life Party, Christian, Anti-War, Pro-Life, Bible Fundamentalist, Egalitarian, Libertarian Left

Sunday, December 19, 2004

GOP Leaders Join Chorus of Rumsfeld Detractors

Washington - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is accustomed to the barbs of public life. Any number of people, for the most part Democrats, have been complaining about him since 1969, when he joined the Nixon administration.

But a different roster of A-list critics is now finding fault with Rumsfeld's management of the military and the war in Iraq. And the sharpest jabs are coming from noteworthy Republicans, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona; Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader from Mississippi, and Susan Collins, the Maine senator who just helped shepherd intelligence reform through Congress.

McCain said he has lost confidence in Rumsfeld, Lott said he should quit sometime in the next year and Collins wrote him a letter asking him about armor on vehicles in Iraq, or the lack of it.

Outside government, William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, called for Rumsfeld to resign, writing that the soldiers "deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have."

He was joined by Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, who called Rumsfeld "an arrogant and isolated Beltway bigwig."

Taken together, Rumsfeld's critics are voicing pent-up frustrations over the conduct and cost of the war in Iraq, its effect on an overtaxed military, and a series of Pentagon scandals and investigations that include the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the use of prewar intelligence and ties to an Iraqi opposition group, and federal convictions linked to a no-bid contract for Air Force tanker planes.

'Days are Numbered'

"This is a trend," said analyst Loren Thompson, president of the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area defense think tank. "What's happening now is that, with the problems in Iraq appearing not to improve, all the reservations about Rumsfeld are becoming more acceptable to voice in public. It is so rare for senior senators from the secretary's own party to say they have no confidence in him. The fact of the matter is, his days are numbered now."

Not so, says the White House. President Bush's aides have been buffeted for more than a week with questions about Rumsfeld's comments and his future in the Cabinet, and at every turn they've offered assurances that Rumsfeld is staying.

"The president believes Secretary Rumsfeld is someone who is an important member of our team and someone who is helping us to move forward as we defeat the ideology of hatred that leads to terrorism," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday.

Rumsfeld spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "There are comments from [Capitol] Hill criticizing him and comments supporting him. The secretary has nothing new to say about this."

The impetus for the calls for Rumsfeld's resignation was the secretary's Dec. 8 meeting with troops in Kuwait, and his answer to a soldier's complaint about the lack of armored vehicles for duty in Iraq.

Rumsfeld bluntly replied: "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."

The soldier's unit went safely into Iraq, the Army said later, with the final installation of armor on its vehicles completed within 24 hours of the complaint. Rumsfeld, on the other hand, returned to a free-fire zone in Washington, where his comments became a touchstone for the ill will that has been building in both parties.

Some of the frustration within the GOP is motivated by complaints that members of Congress hear from constituents whose sons and daughters are driving in unarmored Humvees, or whose spouses have been held over in Iraq or are returning there for a second tour. For National Guard members, that means leaving behind careers and families and household finances.

Few Answers

Others are angry over lending support to the war based on the promising postconflict scenarios that Rumsfeld and his aides predicted. Now those same politicians need answers that will satisfy voters. And good answers are hard to find.

"While Bush doesn't have to run again, these guys have to in 2006," said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "I think that Rumsfeld, and that infamous meeting [in Kuwait], became a metaphor for the American people about what's going wrong there."

If so, that would help explain the visceral reaction that Rumsfeld's performance drew from Senate GOP leaders. Rumsfeld, despite his years of Washington experience and his service in the House during the 1960s, has not fared well on the Hill during the last four years. The reason, staff members say, is simple: Rumsfeld, a natural glad-hander, hasn't worked hard enough to satisfy those who would be his allies, or to disarm those who were his known enemies.

With elections in Iraq scheduled for Jan. 30, few would expect a change at the top of the Pentagon before then. How those elections are conducted, and whether they push Iraq's nascent government forward and help reduce the daily cycle of violence, could influence Rumsfeld's prospects.

But odds that the vote will go well are not good. U.S. military commanders in Iraq have predicted increased violence as the election approaches.

"Right after the election Rumsfeld will probably resign," Korb predicted. "He'll say, 'I've done my job, I've seen the election through, produced a new defense budget.' Whatever else people may think about Bush, he's a good politician. ... He knows that if he forces Rumsfeld out, it's an admission that the war was wrong."

Though a politician at heart, Rumsfeld was kept out of the 2004 presidential campaign, with Bush advisers recognizing how difficult the war issue might be on the campaign trail. During the next month, after time off for the holidays, the installation of a new Congress with bigger Republican majorities in both houses and Bush's second inauguration on Jan. 20, the boiling anger over Rumsfeld could be reduced to a simmer.

But calls for his resignation could just as easily pick up again in late January, as the new Congress takes up defense spending issues and the Senate Armed Services Committee convenes hearings to examine the Pentagon's prewar planning.

"There's no question that Rumsfeld is a man of courage and conviction," said analyst Thompson. "But the problem is he will stick with a position long after the rest of the world has concluded it's wrong. If you're going to be a man of conviction, you're going to have to live with the verdict of the marketplace."

Stephen J. Hedges
The Chicago Tribune

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home