Let Rummy stay out this administration. Hated by the MSM they look for "anything" to slander him. He's a favorite to beat on. SECDEF, hawk, republican who does not pander to the MSM and embarrasses them even on occasion; they love to cut into him at every opportunity they have.
I don't think the US could have had a better SECDEF than we did. He weathered some bad times, had to make serious strategic decisions and adopted a DoD that was on a downward glide slope with no vision and decaying moral.
I’d go as far as to say that moral is “higher” today than in 1999. Soldiers don’t join an Army to sit in garrison. Most of those 20 something guys want to go. They want a CIB, a Combat patch. What soldiers see is when their Army suffers from a “Peace dividend”. When their pay and benefits erode. When housing areas don’t get renovated and needed systems don’t get bought because of a lack of funds. When money is so tight that the allocation for ammunition at ranges has to be adjusted. When soldier should shoot more because they barely meets the minimal standard, but they don’t because there is a lack of funding. When Generals and the Command Sergeant Major’s of the Army get fired for adultery, but the Commander in Chief commits the same, plus perjury but gets off with a slap on his wrist. “He’s your boss.” The DoD suffered from a lack of competent leaders, who were appointed because the toed the Clinton line but were sometimes grossly incompetent (i.e. Brown). When political statements are made and Clinton panders to the “gay” vote and pushes a “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy onto a conservative overwhelmingly male population. Those things hurt moral! But that the MSM didn’t carte to report about. Clinton after all was their boy.
Rummy gets the negative press because he's not liked. But he makes all the right decisions.
Red6
But I think what makes him a brilliant SecDef is the fact that he knows enough to realize the areas where the career military bosses are the ones who know how to run a war. He stays out of their way and lets them do what they have spent decades learning how to do.