High Noon For A Lonesome Cowboy (Rumsfeld Interview)

He had an hour on prime time British TV this week but Donald Rumsfeld, the leading hawk in the Bush administration, is not selling well in Europe. Our correspondent says a short and victorious war in Iraq will vindicate him.

DONALD RUMSFELD ENJOYS telling a story about the precise moment after the September 11 attacks when he felt that the US military was at last adapting to a changed world. He told friends that he knew the top brass had begun to embrace the realities of 21st-century warfare when he was asked to sign a requisition form for saddles and stirrups.

For Rumsfeld this was the moment when the Pentagon bureaucracy stopped thinking about old wars and started planning for new ones. The military were recognising that a single soldier mounted on an old mule could become the most effective vehicle for projecting force, simply by travelling into a position on a Central Asian hill with local partisans and calling down airstrikes with pinpoint accuracy using a GPS device.

As the strategic thinker Edward Luttwak noted in the Times Literary Supplement last month, the speed of allied victory in Afghanistan was due, more than anything, to the ability of mounted US soldiers instantly to call in precision bombing raids that devastated the Taleban and awed the Northern Alliance. The first battle in the war on terror really was decided by a few Americans on a wild frontier, riding tall in the saddle and relying on the speed of their weaponry. It was a victory for cowboys.

The US Defence Secretary has come to enjoy a reputation as the guy in the Bush Administration who shoots straight from the hip. Whether it was briefing the press with crisp authority during the Afghan War, or dismissing France and Germany as "old Europe" during the diplomatic negotiations over the Iraq crisis, Rumsfeld unerringly hits the target. But that plain-spoken quickness on the draw has become, in the eyes of many in Europe, a liability in the struggle to keep the West together at a time of tension. Many Europeans now regard Rumsfeld as the epitome of the cowboy tendency in the US Government, those who rely on their guns to do the talking and yearn to see America operate as a Lone Ranger instead of playing by the rules of international diplomacy.

The belief that the cowboy tendency has failed in its task to round up a respectable enough posse to deal with Saddam Hussein has grown dramatically this week. Turkey’s failure to support the deployment of US troops, the French insistence that they may veto a fresh UN resolution authorising action and Russia’s grimly negative stance towards greater pressure being placed on Iraq all suggest that American diplomacy is faltering. And in the eyes of many, the man most to blame is the plain-spoken Rumsfeld.

Just last week the Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, who backs Bush, told The Wall Street Journal that his task in winning round public opinion for action against Iraq would be easier if the world saw "a lot of Colin Powell and very little of Rumsfeld". When Europe’s foreign and defence establishment met in Munich last month it was Rumsfeld who was in the firing line for barbed comments from the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer. Our own BBC’s Sunday morning radio magazine Broadcasting House regularly makes sport of the US Defence Secretary with its "Donald Rumsfeld soundbite of the week".

The European consensus that Rumsfeld is an arrogant, clod-hopping, bellicose unilateralist who is responsible for placing the Western alliance under strain was wittily encapsulated by The Guardian’s David McKie at the end of last month in his always-entertaining Smallweed column. McKie imagined Saddam Hussein asking for his dearest wish to be granted: "Let me have a man in the heart of the enemy camp who is arrogant, supercilious and smirking; let him treat those people and countries which dare to disagree with him as if they were lesser breeds beyond the law; let him demonstrate in such dealings the masterly diplomatic finesse of a Richard Littlejohn and the delicate sensibility of a Mark Steyn; and let him be called Ronald Dumsfeld. He didn’t get the last part of his wish, though, did he?"

It is undeniable that McKie has articulated a widespread perception of Rumsfeld as the Nicholas Ridley of Bush’s team, the ideologue who most effectively gets under European skin. And suspicion towards Rumsfeld is not restricted to this side of the Atlantic. In Bob Woodward’s instant history of America’s fight against terror, Bush at War, it is the smooth multilateralist Colin Powell who gets the good reviews while Rumsfeld’s team at the Pentagon are painted as difficult and cranky mountain men hiding from diplomacy in a cave of reaction. If you believe fashionable opinion, then the biggest loser so far in America’s war has been Donald Rumsfeld.

But, not for the first time, fashionable opinion is wrong. It is fatal to underestimate Rumsfeld, a former university wrestler and Beltway insider since the Seventies. In his brilliant insider account of the Bush presidency, The Right Man, the former White House speechwriter David Frum gives Rumsfeld the highest marks for intelligence of anyone in the US Cabinet. That intelligence has been the driving force behind the remaking of American defence strategy to adjust to a post Cold War world.

Along the way, those generals who have risen to senior positions in the Pentagon by playing positional games during the Clinton years and going with the politically-correct flow have had their medals ruffled. Officers whose main talent lay in working with the grain of conventional wisdom have been forced to think afresh, and some have not been up to the challenge. These generals have found themselves in the same position as the mandarins who were in place at the Treasury when Nigel Lawson breezed into office. Brains used to accomodating themselves to years of decline have suddenly been forced to think afresh by an original intellect.

The same intellectual self-confidence that allowed Lawson to see off the wiseacres who rubbished "monetarism" helps Rumsfeld frame a witty and assured response to his critics. He knows that that his enemies will not be placated by gestures, they will be satisfied only by his failure. So he means to win. And when it comes to the crunch, so far he has.

In so far as the war on terror has been successful up to now, that’s been due to Donald Rumsfeld and despite Colin Powell.

Indeed, the reason why Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad, and the current crisis is unresolved, has a lot do with the failure of the Powell way of doing things and the reluctance of America to do things the Rumsfeld way in 1991.

With the benefit of hindsight, victory in the first round of the war on terror, against the Taleban, looks as though it was always going to be a walkover. But the defeat of the Taleban only happened after another battle had been fought — between Rumsfeld’s Pentagon and Powell’s State Department.

In the early stages of squaring up to Afghanistan Powell was pushing what became known as a "Southern strategy". He and the State Department distrusted the Northern Alliance and wanted to placate General Musharraf’s Pakistan by putting together a Pashtun coalition from the south of Afghanistan acceptable to Musharraf. Powell’s team sought to soft-pedal attacks on Taleban positions and agreed with Musharraf that "moderate" members of the Taleban whom Pakistan had backed in the past might form part of a new Afghan administration.

While Powell’s team was pursuing this diplomatic route, putting the sensitivities of coalition partners ahead of the requirements of effective war-fighting, the Taleban and their al-Qaeda allies remained secure. It was only late in October, when Rumsfeld won the argument for direct US support of a Northern Alliance offensive, that the fight was taken to the Taleban and they crumbled. The speed of victory not only put al-Qaeda to flight and enabled the people of Afghanistan to emerge from tyranny, it also secured respect for American resolution and the anti-terror alliance itself.

The preference for allowing the coalition to define the mission, rather than vice-versa, has governed Colin Powell’s way of operating in the past. The success of the first Gulf War owes a lot to Powell's generalship. But victory was marred by one mistake which haunts the world to this day — the decision to leave Saddam in power at the end of the conflict. That judgement was made out of deference to the Allies, especially the Arab powers, who had been assembled to help liberate Kuwait. Although it was clearly desirable to remove Saddam, and just such a course of action was pressed by the recently-resigned Margaret Thatcher, the Gulf War mission was defined by the wishes of the whole coalition. It was a lowest common denominator war. Which left a high risk tyrant in place.

During the build-up to action against Iraq this time Powell has, once again, sought to tailor American strategy to the wishes of America’s allies. Along with Tony Blair, he was instrumental in persuading George Bush to seek UN approval for action against a regime which threatens US interests directly.

Rumsfeld has, throughout, placed a different emphasis on affairs. While the Secretary of Defence recognises that allies are indispensable, and values the commitment from countries as diverse as the United Arab Emirates and Bulgaria, he believes that if you allow coalition-building to take precedence over victory you privilege a desirable means over a necessary end. Chasing the good opinion of allies nearly derailed victory in Afghanistan and eventually blighted what seemed at the time like a victory in the first Gulf War. If America now subordinates its policy to the whim of France or Germany it will find itself acting in their national interests, not its own; it will compromise the security of millions for the sake of Jacques Chirac’s amour propre.

That belief explains why Rumsfeld can appear so high-handed when he talks of "old Europe". As he said last August: "It’s less important to have unanimity than it is to be making the right decisions and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it may seem lonesome."

There is something distinctively cowboyish about the use of that word lonesome. But if there is a cowboy that Donald Rumsfeld really resembles it is the Gary Cooper of High Noon, the sheriff who won’t allow the fears of others to prevent him doing what he knows to be right for their protection.

The real test for Rumsfeld will be what happens when the shooting starts. If his remaking of the US military, and his insistence on fresh strategic thinking, leads to swift victory, then he will be vindicated. If the war in Iraq gets bogged down then the vultures will begin to circle: those in the US military he has shaken up, those in the State Department he has argued against, those in Europe he has clashed with.

Donald Rumsfeld may be on a lonesome road. But he won’t worry if it takes him quickly to Baghdad.

IT could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months. — on the prospect of war with Iraq

TO be in an eight-by-eight cell in beautiful, sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is not inhumane treatment — on the interrogation of terrorist suspects

MY feeling is that until we catch him, which we will, we won't know precisely where he is. — on the hunt for Osama bin Laden

YOU might catch senior al-Qaeda leaders and senior Taleban leaders. If they are the kind you want to shoot, you shoot them. — advice to US troops in Afghanistan

I DON’T like the idea of our planes being shot at. The idea that our planes go out and get shot at with impunity bothers me. — on a mission to knock out Iraqi defences

THERE are 19 countries in Nato. So it’s 16 to 3. And what we have to do for the US is to make sure that planning does go forward, preferably within Nato, but if not, bilaterally or multiple bilaterals. — on France, Germany and Belgium’s opposition to arming Turkey

IN your press conference tonight, Mr President, try to act presidential. Don’t go into long explanations of why you did this or that. Whenever you can, answer the question yes or no. Be decisive, in command. Be crisp and concise. Don’t let them nickel and dime you to death. — advice to President Gerald Ford

DON’T divide the world into "them" and "us". Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals or opponents. Accept them as facts.

1932 Born on July 9 in Chicago to Donald and Jeannette Rumsfeld (née Husted). Attends New Trier High School, Illinois, gains a scholarship to Princeton

HOBBIES Farming, antique clock collection. Wrestled and played American football at Princeton. All-Navy wrestling champion. Squash (style described as "fiercely competitive")

Mr. Rumsfeld is a product of WWII propaganda, his childhood was saturated in statism, his adult life as an advocate of government and corporatism. He supported Saddam in the eighties and lies about it now. What a perfect representative of what is wrong with America, we are no longer a 'shining city on a hill', now we are evolving into a bully with no restraint.

What a perfect representative of what is wrong with America, we are no longer a 'shining city on a hill', now we are evolving into a bully with no restraint.

Yeah, just like after the Japanese bombed harbor. We evolved into a big bully with no restraint pretty quick. And thank God for that.

What a perfect representative of what is wrong with America, we are no longer a 'shining city on a hill', now we are evolving into a bully with no restraint.

A bully with no restraint? What a perfect description to depict the 9/11 terrorists. You couldn't possibly be talking about the victims, could you? Or perhaps America's right to defend herself from unprovoked evil attacks, could you?

Yeah, just like after the Japanese bombed harbor.

Iraq has never attacked the United States, we have bombed Iraq for the past twelve years. We armed Iraq in the eighties, Rumsfeld was one of our representatives, perhaps complicit in any crimes of the Iraqi regime.

BTW, Rumor has it that U.S. sanctions on Japan were part of FDR's plan to bring America into WWII.

A bully with no restraint? What a perfect description to depict the 9/11 terrorists.

They were weaklings with no hope striking out at people, for the most part, who had no idea they could be targets.

You couldn't possibly be talking about the victims, could you?

As far as I know the victims of 9/11 were victims of our foreign policy.

perhaps America's right to defend herself from unprovoked evil attacks, could you?

Sadly recent history, Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia..., seems to indicate that we are the unprovoked attacker.

Sorry, no Sale. 8 Years of Clinton "restraint" brought us the Kobol Towers, the USS Cole bombing, The Embassy bombing and The WTC Attacks i & II. If you go to war you play to win not to stroke Chirac's ego.

Hitler in Mein Kampf laid out the blueprint for WW2 and the Final Solution.... noone took him seriously until it was too late. Bin Laden has declared war on the US in particular and the West in General... He has said explicitly that he wants to obtain Nuclear , Biological & Chemical weapons and use them on US.

In the 80's Saddam was the lesser of 2 evils, now it's time for him to go.

Thank God for Rummy. He is the best Defense Sectary of my lifetime.

Henry Kissinger described Donald Rumsfeld as the most ruthless man he ever met.

Suits me fine -- he's the U.S. Secretary of Defense, not the head of the Red Cross.

At least now we all know why George W. Bush sleeps peacefully at night.

Afghanistan never attacked the United States, either, but we went to war with them entirely because of their cozy relationships with terrorists.

And we don't know that Iraq has not attacked us. The 1993 bombers of the WTC had Iraqi and stolen Kuwaiti passports. Now who had the world's greatest supply of stolen Kuwaiti passports around 1993?

"Iraq has never attacked the United States," you say. Yeah, well, and Al Quaeda didn't attack the World Trade Center until, well, they attacked the World Trade Center. The governments point is that saying, "Well they've never attacked us, so we can't do anything about it" is a prescription for sitting around and waiting until we get hit again. We tried playing defense against terrorism, and we got 9/11. Were going on offense, now, because, after all, the best defense is a good offense.

Even if we were compicit in arming Hussein, that rather increases our responsibility to get rid of him. Past imprudence doesn't justify present inaction.

We have been bombing Iraq for the last 12 years to prevent Saddam from commiting genocide in the no fly zone. Ask the Kurds of Kurdistan if they mind our bombing, or if they prefer to be gassed again.

And by the way, was the Japanese Rape of Nanking right before Pearl Harbor where 370,000 defenseless Chinese citizens were slaughtered and 80,000 women raped also part of FDR's secret plan to make the peace-loving Japanese seem warlike?

Don't push your luck, LOL!!!

LOL. You're right. But I'm sure it's more than luck -- I'm convinced that aging is largely a function of one's attitude towards life.

I once met an older guy in Saskatchewan who told me he played in a 50+ hockey league. He was 54, but the guy didn't look a day over 40.

I think some of UBE's comments about the protracted war in Iraq are legitimate, but they are more appropriately directed at the Clinton administration for what was basically an eight-year hiatus in the war. There is no question that Clinton's team fell down on the job, and as I've posted a number of times on the live thread about Bush's press conference tonight, it has become apparent to me that Iraq was directly or indirectly involved in every terrorist attack against the U.S. going all the way back to 1993. It was not a coincidence that the first World Trade Center attack occurred only a month after Clinton was inaugurated.

I've always had my suspicions about the U.S. involvement as far back as 1991, but Saddam Hussein doesn't generate (or deserve) much sympathy here.

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