Donald Rumsfeld - Best Defense Secretary Since Robert McNamara

President Bush made a surprise announcement the day after the election that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was resigning to be replaced by Robert Gates. Although the President had told the press last week that Rumsfeld would stay until the end of his term, he explained that he had to engage in this bit of misdirection because he didn't want to influence the election, which showed an admirable sense of fair play on his part. Many voters would have been extremely upset by such a shocking announcement before the election and may even have been too disheartened to go out and vote if they had known about his resignation beforehand because Donald Rumsfeld has been one of our greatest Defense Secretaries. He is perhaps the best Defense Secretary since Robert McNamara, who presided over the Vietnam War. Not only did Rumsfeld serve in the office longer than anyone except McNamara, the two men have much in common.

Unfortunately, misconceptions about the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq have led some to criticize McNamara and Rumsfeld, but I think history will show that while they made all the right decisions, the generals and soldiers on the ground did a poor job executing many of their directives so they really shouldn't be blamed. They also would have done better if they didn't have to contend with being second-guessed by the liberal media. Rumsfeld revealed some of his irritation at having to be judged by people who are a lot less intelligent than he is when he said at yesterday's press conference that the War in Iraq is "complex for people to comprehend." But I don't think the fact that they had to deal with so many people who just weren't as smart as they are should be held against them.

Both McNamara and Rumsfeld subscribed to the doctrine of "underwhelming force," that is, using as few resources as possible in prosecuting a war in order to lose less. That is why Rumsfeld and McNamara both overruled their generals, who believed that more troops were needed, in favor of smaller, nimbler fighting forces. Rumsfeld also didn't believe in expending a lot of scarce Pentagon funds on such equipment as body armor or armored vehicles, which would just have drained the funds available for sophisticated weapons systems.

Both McNamara and Rumsfeld came to office vowing to restructure the Pentagon bureaucracy and reassert civilian control, which is probably why they get bad-mouthed by a lot of military men. They both brought a mathematical precision to their decision making since each has a background in mathematics and finance. McNamara pioneered the use of mathematical and financial analysis in military planning and served as the head of the Ford Motor Company before coming to the Pentagon under Kennedy. Rumsfeld has an MBA and has served as the CEO of a number of corporations. Because of their backgrounds they were able to make decisions unswayed by emotion or political considerations. Instead of seeing troops as individuals, they saw them as statistics on a spreadsheet, which made it a lot easier for them to make the tough decisions that were necessary. Numbers don't lie, unlike people, which is why they didn't listen to what people were telling them if the numbers didn't back them up.

In fact, McNamara and Rumsfeld both had a remarkable ability to stay focused and not get distracted by a lot of advice and criticism. Once they made up their minds they could not be diverted no matter how many people questioned their strategy. As former Secretary of the Army Thomas White said, "McNamara was a guy who was absolutely convinced that he was right, even when 99 percent of the world was telling him that he was wrong.... I don't know whether you'd characterize that as intellectual arrogance. What they say about Henry Kissinger was that he was not burdened by a great deal of self-doubt. I think that's true of Don Rumsfeld; that he thinks it through, and he arrives at a point of view, and he will execute to that point of view and get it done. Once he's made his mind up, that's it."

There is one important difference between the two men, however. Unfortunately, toward the end of his service, McNamara did begin to have doubts about the Vietnam War. He was troubled when a war protester immolated himself outside the window of his Pentagon office. He began to suffer from stomach ulcers as his concern about the war mounted. These doubts affected his ability to conduct the war and Lyndon Johnson eventually had to replace him. In recent years he has written books and appeared in a documentary, The Fog of War, detailing the mistakes he thinks were made, believing that future generations could learn from these mistakes. On the other hand Rumsfeld, who has probably not read any of McNamara's books, has never had any doubt about anything he did, and it is unlikely we will be seeing any books of mea culpas from him. It is perhaps this quality that puts him a notch above McNamara and makes him the greatest Secretary of Defense we have ever had.

Yet Rumsfeld's greatness may not be recogized by historians for many years to come. Unfortunately, you sometimes have to go with the legacy you have, not the legacy you want.

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Jon Swift, Iraq, War on Terror, Terrorism, Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert McNamara, Vietnam, Politics, Foreign Policy