Time for Rumsfeld to step down

Defense Secretary's plans for a "better army" backfired, as can be seen in the Iraq war

By Alan Ouellette
The Collegian

IN THE WAKE of last week’s recommendations from retired military generals for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, President Bush stubbornly defended the Secretary of Defense and let Americans know that Rumsfeld has his “full support and deepest appreciation.”

This is a perfect example of what can be euphemistically referred to as President Bush’s diligence — his dedication to carrying out existing policy objectives without making significant adjustments to his staff or course of action.

If Rumsfeld were replaced, it could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of failure — something that Bush, as he has demonstrated repeatedly, does not have the capacity to do.

However, Rumsfeld’s resignation would be the very move that Bush needs to help change public opinion about the war in Iraq and to save the Republican Party in elections to come.

Rumsfeld’s replacement would serve a much more crucial purpose for the Bush Administration than a mere attempt to reconstruct its image: it would signal an ideological shift away from the current way it views the situation in Iraq.

From the time the United States invaded Baghdad, it is clear that the administration counted on a quick display of technological prowess to win the war.

As George Packer notes in The New Yorker, Rumsfeld was determined to transform traditional “war fighting into a combination of information technology and precision firepower that would eliminate the need for large numbers of ground troops and prolonged involvement in distant countries.”

Perhaps the thousands of American casualties and the inapplicability of the so-called Rumsfeld Doctrine to the continuing occupation of Iraq best illustrates the viability of his military vision.

One thing Rumsfeld’s war-making strategies overlooked, as Packer discusses, is that war is a fundamentally human endeavor — learning the native language and attempting to understand the people and their customs. While cities can be invaded by means of technological strength, they will inevitably be overtaken without the presence of a large number of soldiers on the ground.

Waging a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq is contingent on community building and developing a relationship between Iraqis and the United States military that is based on both trust and respect, not solely on training Iraqi security forces or targeting specific terrorist cells.

While it is clear that Bush will not end the occupation of Iraq, the ineffective methods of Rumsfeld and the administration’s declining approval ratings places them in a position to capitulate to demands for the gradual reduction of troops in Iraq and a quick transfer of power to the Iraqis.

Moreover, if Bush’s strategy remains unchanged, it is difficult to imagine a tangible sense of progress being made by the end of his term. Rather, Bush must replace those members of his staff whose conceptualizations of war are not in touch with reality.

In doing so, Americans will be in a position to understand that wars do not happen quickly and with little effort, but only with a huge investment of time and resources.

Democracy building is indeed a great, even epic, endeavor — something that should not have been a lesson learned from the Iraq War, but a self-evident fact at the time of invasion.

Hopefully, the administration, under the guidance of a new Defense Secretary, would rethink the situation in Iraq and begin to clean up the mess it created three years ago, even if that means increasing the number of American soldiers on the ground and retraining the United States military to better understand the cultural dimensions of war.

Regardless of Bush’s decision, the administration’s many shortcomings cannot go unacknowledged for long — either they can admit to past mistakes and work quickly to make up for past blunders or let history decide the legacy of what is already being called one of the worst administrations the United States has seen.

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