RUMSFELD DEFENDS HIS WAR DOCTRINE

Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has guaranteed himself a place in military history with what is now called The Rumsfeld Doctrine – the use of light armored forces supported by hi-tech weapons and “shock and awe” air power.
The problem with the Rumsfeld military doctrine is that it has so far been a failure and some of his critics claim he is like a captain going down with his ship. Unfortunately, he is watching the ship sink and could be out of office when it finally sinks. If we eventually have to cut and run from Iraq and Afghanistan because there was no post war planning and a flawed military strategy, Rumsfeld will still refuse to admit he was responsible.
That is increasingly clear because, despite the deepening crises in Iraq and Afghanistan he continues to claim that his doctrine has succeeded and it is only a matter of time before every one else realizes that fact.
On October 7, in an opinion column for the Washington Post he sounded off about Afghanistan, stressing that everything there was not as bad as the media would like to make it. In his view, the country and its people were doing well economically and any set backs were outweighed by achievements. In particular, he was heartened by the opening of a $24 million Coca Cola plant and the building of 25 courthouses. If the situation in Afghanistan was not as serious as everyone knows it is, those example of progress would be laughable.
Rumsfeld tried to sugar coat what he had to say by stating that “today can always look worse than yesterday, or even two months ago.” That statement epitomized the kind of silly platitudes he has become famous for in his lunchtime television conferences at the Pentagon.
“Building a new nation is never a straight, steady climb upwards,” he added, while ignoring much of the reality.
The day his rosy picture of Afghan life was published, General David Richards, the NATO commander who has taken over security of the country, issued a dire warning that Afghanistan was at “a tipping point” and the Afghans could switch their allegiances to the Taliban if reconstruction did not show the population that their lives were being markedly improved.
“They will say, ‘we do not want the Taliban but we would rather have that austere, unpleasant life than another five years of war,” Gen. Richards added, thereby demonstrating that Rumsfeld claim about improved living standards was a deliberate lie.
The General’s stark assessment of the war contrasts sharply with Rumsfeld’s on so many levels. In the Washington Post opinion piece, Rumsfeld avoided all the prickly issues like why 3,000 civilians, as well as Afghan security personnel and coalition forces have been killed this year by a resurgent Taliban and why the British believe Pakistani intelligence is aiding sections of the Taliban. He also sidestepped the fact that NATO has admitted there are insufficient troops and equipment, especially in the dangerous Helmand Province controlled by the British, and that most of the country is outside the control of the Karzai administration in the capital, Kabul. He did not explain why, if Afghans are doing so well economically, as he claims, heroin production has tripled.
Any casual observer of Rumsfeld’s opinion piece would be justified in seeing it as a desperate attempt by him to defend his record and to paint a pleasant but bogus picture of the war in Afghanistan in advance of Congressional elections. But for Rumsfeld, who is a man with a big ego, it is about more than just politicking. It is about his legacy.
So far it is a tarnished legacy and classic examples of his failed war doctrine are to be found in the way he handled the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the major mistakes at the outset of the campaign in Afghanistan was his belief that air strikes and small forces compensated for larger troop deployments. In the siege of the Tora Bora mountains where Osama Bin Laden and his inner circle were holed up in caves – perhaps 3,000 insurgents – Rumsfeld hired out the job of killing and capturing them to Afghan militias, a small group of US Special Forces and heavy air power. The planned failed and Bin Laden and his followers, especially his inner circle, escaped into Pakistan. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld did not change strategy. Instead, neo-conservatives supported his belief that air power, small U.S. forces, with the help of paid war lords, would finally sort out the problem. The outcome as we now know has been a resurgent Taliban. A blind adherence of the White House inner circle to the Rumsfeld Doctrine, even after the Tora Bora debacle, was as much a factor in a failure to defeat the Taliban as the White House decision to shift its focus to Iraq, therein weakening the US military’s capability in Afghanistan.
The invasion of Iraq again followed the Rumsfeld doctrine with the same flawed ingredients, especially the view that there was no need to plan for reconstruction. Smaller forces and airpower would do the job and the Iraqi population would be thrilled. So, the war began with 50 “Shock and Awe” attacks aimed at decapitating the Iraqi leadership but that failed and many innocent civilians were killed. From the outset of the invasion, based on Rumsfeld’s strategy, insufficient numbers of troops were sent to defend the borders and to establish peace. The result was chaos, followed by the widespread looting of Baghdad, which Rumsfeld dismissed at the time as a minor issue. He ignored calls for more boots on the ground while most of the infrastructure, including power plants and the oil industry. Worse, still there were insufficient troops to guard massive arms dumps once controlled by the Iraqi army. Insurgents and Al Qaeda types stole thousands of shells, weapons and explosives from those dumps. Much of that materiel has since been used to kill a large percentage of the 2,700 US casualties and to injure tends of thousands of others. That does not even take into account the tens of thousands of dead civilians. An indication of the deepening crisis in Iraq is that 700 US military personnel were injured in attacks in September in Iraq.
Despite overwhelming evidence of failed policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush continues to defend Rumsfeld and his doctrine and expects the American people to “stay the course.”
In recent weeks, details have emerged that some members of the British Cabinet thought that President Bush gave Rumsfeld too much power. That revelation came from advance publicity about the planned publication of dairies by the former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett.
He wrote that members of the British Cabinet asked British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, tough questions about the Iraq invasion and why there was a distinct lack of plans for post-war reconstruction. According to Blunkett, Rumsfeld was singled out for a lot of criticism by Cabinet members with the exception of Tony Blair. He was put under immense pressure during the invasion and snapped during a Cabinet meeting when Blunkett told him the US and Britain were fighting a hi-tech war without a modern strategy to support it. Blunkett claims that President Bush’s inner circle in his first term was deeply divided about war strategy. That may well be true because Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force was sacrificed for Rumsfeld’s belief in the use of light ground forces, plenty of bombs and hi-tech control and command systems.