Nope. Rummy is our best Secretary of Defense ever.
I have to disagree on that one. Rummy darn near destroyed the military the first go at it which if I read your age right happened before you were even born. Not all the blame falls on him though back then as today there was a congress who also failed to do their duty. But I want to show you something.
Rummy would have had to have known our military was in deep trouble when he took office. It was all over the news and it was the media under Clinton saying as much. Here's some examples.
Navy May Have To Dock Ships Due to Poor Maintenance
Record deployments take toll on military
The Shrinking Navy: Build-Down To Breakdown Now a good Secretary of Defense would have called in the JCOS ASAP the day he took office and asked what do you need? What is deployable and what isn't? What are the maintenance issues? How many troops do you need to maintain a ready to deploy military> Can we handle if needed two hemispheric long term engagements? Can we do this without being over deployed and dependent on the reservist? But Rummy and congress didn't do that. They waited till after 9/11 and tried to deploy two carriers which should by all rights have been in the shipyard.
The ships weren't ready due to issues that originated at the Pentagon level yet the ships Two Commanding Officers were relieved of duty as scapegoats. Can you name me the Admirals who were relieved of duty? It is the Pentagon and Secretary of the Navy and in some cases Secretary of Defense who approves or disapproves of needed ship yard work. The Ships Captain has some say but not much.
Between 1981-1988 this nation had it's most ready military in post WW2 history and it operated non reservist dependent. I'll add more to this. If Rummy is so smart well then Clinton's Sec of Defense must have been also a real gem. Congress and Rummy are fighting the war in Iraq and elsewhere based on Slick Willie's 1996End Troop Strength numbers for active duty. You see he and congress passed up the Golden Opportunity to repair the damage such as increasing the active duty military to where troops were not seeing two and three different year long combat deployments an enlistment. Rummy/Congress is using every band-aid tactic possible such as 8 year obligations and never ending reservist/NG call ups rather than add more needed regular active duty.
The weeks following 9/11 could have had enough volunteers to have FIXED the manpower issue. You can not win a war and cut defense at the same time.
If Rummy and congress keep it up they will destroy the Branch Reserve armed forces as well as the National Guards. How much longer to you think the private sector can afford these never ending call ups? Before Bush SR any reservist might have seen a call up one time in their reserve career and by that I mean the lifers. Now it's S.O.P. in the D.O.D. NG's unless there is an all out war belong at home especially after AMPLE TIME has passed to train new troops.
No I do not agree with how Rummy has managed the Armed Forces nor congress sitting on their hands ala John Warner. It's not his party name but his policies. Rummy isn't even in the same class as Caspar was in management abilities.