The Middle East birthed the world's great monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, Islam. During the past 6 years Washington has produced lesser Gods of One, who believe that the world is as they say it is, or will be as soon as their divine breath falls on it. Regarding Iraq, the Bush presidency has contained three such deities--Mr. Bush himself, Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld, who likely has done the most harm to the nation through his willful mismanagement of the war.
How willful? "We didn't have a plan" for confronting an insurgency in post-Saddam Iraq, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies tells "Frontline." To have had such a plan, in Mr. Rumsfeld's mind, would have been to mar the glorious victory for democracy he believed that the U.S.-led juggernaut would speedily win. "We never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option," contritely confirms Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff who helped plan the takedown of Saddam.
In May 2004--13 months after Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed rampant looting, a dark harbinger of bloodier chaos, as part of freedom's "untidiness," and by which time car bombs had killed hundreds of Iraqis, the Marines had assaulted the murderers' lair of Fallujah, and Moqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia had taken to the warpath--occupation administrator Paul Bremer asked Mr. Rumsfeld--who denied the existence of an "insurgency" or a "civil war" long after these bloody outbreaks were obvious to a bright schoolboy--for 40,000 more troops. Request ignored.
Three months later, says Gen. Keane, there was still "no plan to defeat the insurgency." In fact, Mr. Rumsfeld's idea was for U.S. forces "to keep a light footprint," taking shelter in big bases and engaging the enemy only as a last resort. With the 2004 U.S. election pending, the secretary, fearful of heavy U.S. casualties, pinned responsibility for victory on the Iraq government, few of whose forces had been fully trained.
More killing stillJanuary 2005 saw national elections boycotted by 90 percent of Iraq's Sunnis. Almost immediately, the Sunni insurgency stepped up the violence. "When we did not secure the population, the enemy realized the population was fair game," Gen. Keane tells "Frontline." "We were not securing them, the Iraqis couldn't do it yet." Horrendous carnage ensued.
Amid this gorefest, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got word from a deputy of a slim ray of hope. It took the form of Col. H.R. McMaster, who had jumped the traces of the Rumsfeld Doctrine to implement a warfighting strategy of "clear-hold-build." Col. McMaster's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, ordered to Ninawa Province, had kicked jihadist fighters out of the main city of Tal Afar, but then its soldiers had done something odd. They had
stayed
, stationing themselves among the people to keep the insurgents from reoccupying Tal Afar and chopping off heads. Schools and markets reopened, reconstruction got humming, and elections were held drawing 90-percent participation--in a place that is half-Sunni and half-Shiite.Miss Rice was convinced by Tal Afar and by Mosul, where Lt. Gen. David Petraeus had achieved similar gains (unsustained, alas, by the unit that replaced his). "Our political-military strategy," Miss Rice told Congress, "has to be to clear, hold and build." Ten days later, Mr. Rumsfeld publicly belittled that strategy. It took a Democratic sweep of Congress to establish it, in the form of a "surge" led by Gen. Petraeus, and to send Mr. Rumsfeld packing.
Mr. Rumsfeld and his generals' failure to learn from the Vietnam War is mind-boggling. In that war, Robert McNamara's policy of incremental escalation and Gen. William Westmoreland's relentless quest for large-army battles effectively ceded the crucially important villages to the Viet Cong. It took Richard Nixon's defense secretary, Melvin Laird, and Westmoreland's successor, Gen. Creighton Abrams, to fight the war where and how it needed to be fought, employing an early version of "clear-hold-build." Congressional perfidy, not flawed strategy, doomed South Vietnam.
As the LBJ team was wedded to its follies, Mr. Rumsfeld was wedded to his--specifically, the notion that high technology would control the 21st century battlefield, with no requirement for large numbers of troops. The situation on the ground in Iraq changed, calling for a counterinsurgency, which demands many troops; Mr. Rumsfeld's strategy didn't change. The toll of the dead today includes at least 66,000 Iraqi civilians, more than 7,000 Iraqi soldiers and police, and more than 3,800 Coalition troops, 93 percent of them Americans. It takes a lot of death to sate the pride of ego. Apparently, more even than this. Two days before Mr. Rumsfeld left office, "Frontline" notes, he outlined 14 options for Iraq. Clear-hold-build wasn't one of them.
"Endgame" (see it at pbs.org) is dismal, but civically requisite, viewing, making clear that while Donald Rumsfeld committed no crimes, what he committed was worse than most crimes.