The Salt Lake Tribune August 29, 2006
Downward roll: Defense boss has few friends left
By Matthew D. LaPlante
Touring the Middle East a month after the U.S. military's expeditious invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was basking in the apparent miscalculations of those who had predicted U.S. forces long would be mired in a difficult war.
"Never have so many been so wrong about so much," Rumsfeld told his troops in April 2003.
That was before the insurgency. Before the first signs of civil war. Before the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere came to light.
That was before Iraq began looking, to many Americans, like another war - the one that was just ending when Rumsfeld began his first tenure as defense secretary, under President Ford in 1975.
Rumsfeld is scheduled to speak in Salt Lake City today at a time in which his leadership is being questioned by an increasing number of troops, military families, veterans and the American public - a time in which he has seen a shift in public support similar to that felt by his Vietnam-era predecessors.
An April CNN/Gallup poll found just 37 percent of Americans have a positive view of Rumsfeld - a 5 percent dip from the defense secretary's previous low in December. During the same period, Gallup pollsters found that the number of Americans who viewed Rumsfeld unfavorably had jumped 12 points.
Several high-profile former military officers have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, including a number of retired generals who led troops in Iraq. More recently, Rumsfeld was harangued by the Alaskan families of soldiers whose tours in Iraq were extended for four more months of combat duty in Baghdad.
In an interview during his flight to Fairbanks, Rumsfeld told The Associated Press he saw no reason for the soldiers or their families to be angry at him.
"These people are volunteers," he told reporters Saturday. "They all signed up. They all are there doing what they're doing because they want to."
Rumsfeld's admirers adore such frankness, but it doesn't sit well with everyone. Among the immediate critics of Rumsfeld's comments about the recently extended soldiers was Karen Meredith, of Mountain View, Calif., whose son Kenneth Ballard was killed in Iraq in May 2004.
"This arrogant, pathetic excuse of a man has once again disrespected and shown how little he regards the military that he supposedly leads," Meredith wrote in her blog, ''Gold Star Mom Speaks Out.''
"His comments demonstrate his feeling that since 'they' volunteered he can use them for anything he wants.' "
Though few in Congress speak of Rumsfeld with such vitriol, the former representative from Illinois' troubles have carried onto Capitol Hill.
"The experiences of the global war on terrorism have largely discredited Rumsfeld with many members of Congress," said Loren Thompson, a Georgetown University professor who runs the Lexington Institute, a public-policy think tank in Washington, D.C. "In Congress, he doesn't have much of a following left."
It's been a long fall.
At the time Rumsfeld made his Churchillian comments about his Iraq invasion detractors being "so wrong," about 58 percent of Americans supported him, according to Gallup.
USA Today then described the loquacious defense secretary as "giddy" in the wake of a "couple of weeks in which his vision of modern warfare seemed largely vindicated, his place in history assured."
Military writer and political analyst Andrew Krepinevich described Rumsfeld in a different way. He called him "an insufferable winner."
Now - more than three years and nearly 3,000 coalition deaths later - Rumsfeld's post-invasion attitude has returned to haunt him, said Pat Towell, Krepinevich's colleague at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
"The problem with not being a gracious winner is if the situation goes south on you, you may have a shortfall of friends," Towell said.
So rather than leaving a legacy of military reformation, as was Rumsfeld's intention, the oldest-ever defense secretary may be remembered in much the same way as his Vietnam-era counterpart, Robert McNamara, said John Pike, a defense expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org.
"The problem that McNamara had in Vietnam was what they called back then the 'credibility gap,' " Pike said. "They kept saying, 'we think we see a light at the end of the tunnel' and that things were improving and well, we know now, they weren't."
Rumsfeld has the same problem, Pike said, though it is one that developed incrementally over time - what Thompson called "a slow motion Tet Offensive in terms of domestic reaction."
The Tet Offensive began in early 1968 and was a military defeat for North Vietnam but is considered a turning point of the Vietnam War because it brought the death and destruction home to Americans watching on television and exposed U.S. exaggerations about the progress of the war.
Thompson suspects Rumsfeld may not even be granted the historical pity that the troubled and somewhat repentant McNamara has come to enjoy.
"I don't think we'll ever see Donald Rumsfeld do a mea culpa or see him bemoaning the consequences of his own policies," Thompson said. "In the end, that may make him an even less sympathetic character."
© Copyright 2006, The Salt Lake Tribune
