[iwar] [fc:Rumsfeld.Makes.War]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-23 08:08:59


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Rumsfeld.Makes.War]
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Chicago Tribune
October 22, 2001
Rumsfeld Makes War

He was hanging by a thread, and then came Sept.  11.  No longer
embattled, the defense chief shows he's got the right stuff. 

By John M.  Donnelly, Special to the Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Almost every day now, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
stands at the Pentagon podium and meets the press, the most visible
government official in a confounding new war. 

When he does, he is articulate and calm.  Then he's testy; then he's
grave.  Then he's funny; then serious again.  He's all of those things
in a single session, but he rarely is too much of any one quality.  In
short, he's in control. 

Bespectacled, buttoned-down and impressively fit for a 69-year-old,
Rumsfeld can be stern and tight-lipped, especially when it comes to
information about current or future operations in Afghanistan. 

But the man known to Pentagon people as the "SECDEF" has earned the
respect of even hard-edged newsies and hacks. 

"Although he has not told us very much, he has been like a father
figure," says Mark Thompson, veteran defense correspondent for Time
magazine. 

At one briefing on Afghanistan, Rumsfeld is asked if the U.S.  military
is running out of targets to strike and, if so, what its attack jets
will hit.  After a typical pause -- the kind most people in Washington
don't bother to take, the kind that normal people use to collect
thoughts -- Rumsfeld gives an answer that isn't much of an answer:
"Well, for one thing, we're finding that some of the targets we hit need
to be re-hit.  Second, we're not running out of targets.  Afghanistan
is."

The press room erupts with laughter.  He's charmed his way out of
another one. 

Watching this performance, it's hard to believe that, before Sept.  11,
many in the nation's capital were calling for the head of Rumsfeld, not
Osama bin Laden's. 

In fact, four days before hijacked jetliners slammed into the World
Trade Center and Pentagon, a Washington Post column said that "the
sweepstakes have already begun" on who might succeed Rumsfeld.  The
question was not so much whether President Bush would let Rumsfeld go,
but when. 

"Rummy," as the former Chicagoan is familiarly known, was under fire
from just about every quarter: from the left and the right, the press
and Congress, generals and defense contractors.  In early September, a
reporter even asked if he wasn't feeling "a little beat up."

The same coy evasiveness that today beguiles reporters only yesterday
was seen as a flaw. 

"He was all listen and no talk," says Thompson, looking back on
Rumsfeld's rough going last summer, as if it were ages ago. 

For most of this year, no one in the small and sometimes catty Defense
Department world knew what Rumsfeld wanted to do with the U.S.  military
-- including, it seemed, Rumsfeld.  The only thing the insiders knew was
that Rumsfeld was talking about "transforming" the Pentagon.  But they
didn't know how and he wasn't sharing -- and that scared them. 

In the military, you need to play by the rules, and one of the rules is
that you can't succeed without friends.  You need friends in the press,
in Congress, in corporations, in the armed forces -- because it can get
rough if you try to just go it alone.  Everybody's ready to trash your
pet program -- be it a tank or a new kind of tray to carry food in the
mess hall.  You need to build a coalition, just like a nation going to
war.  Rumsfeld, despite an astonishing record of success in business and
government -- including a previous stint as SECDEF -- seemed to some to
have forgotten that lesson.  He conducted himself as if the rules that
require alliance-building in Washington didn't apply to him. 

Then came Sept.  11.  So many things changed.  The public's view of
Rumsfeld was one of them. 

- - -
A product of Chicago's north suburbs -- born in Evanston to successful
North Shore Realtor George Rumsfeld and his wife, Jeanette, he grew up
in Winnetka, and graduated from New Trier -- Rumsfeld attended Princeton
on a scholarship and captained the wrestling and football teams there in
the early 1950s.  His wife, Joyce, was his high school sweetheart, and
they've stayed together since. 

After college, he became a naval aviator, before launching a meteoric
career as a captain of government and industry. 

In 1962, at the age of 30, Rumsfeld was elected to Congress from the
politically moderate 13th District, an amalgam composed of Chicago's
50th ward and a swath of suburbs from Palatine to Evanston and which had
long been represented by Marguerite Stitt Church.  In 1969, he left
Congress and joined the Nixon White House as a loyal and top domestic
adviser, but an ambitious one who desired the post of ambassador to
NATO.  He was initially rebuffed, but later got the post. 

After Nixon's forced resignation, President Ford made Rumsfeld White
House chief of staff (his subordinates included Dick Cheney, for whom he
was a mentor) and, for a brief period, the country's youngest-ever
defense secretary at 45. 

Upon the election of Jimmy Carter, Rumsfeld entered the private sector,
beginning a successful 23-year corporate career that brought him back to
his Chicago area roots.  From 1977 to 1985, he ran the Skokie-based
pharmaceutical giant G.D.  Searle &amp; Co., then moved on to the
chairmanship of other companies, including General Instrument Corp., a
Chicago broadcast technology firm that is now part of Motorola.  He also
served on numerous commissions and boards, including serving as a
director of Tribune Co.  Under Rumsfeld's stewardship, the stock values
of both Searle and General Instrument soared.  And in the process, he
himself became a multimillionaire -- he is thought to be the wealthiest
member of the Bush Cabinet.  Along the way, Rumsfeld acquired a
reputation as a tough customer, if a charming one. 

His squash game is a testament to that.  "I played with him a lot,"
recalls his friend, David Hiller, president of Tribune Interactive.  "He
is one of the most competitive son-of-a-guns I have ever stepped on the
court with: quick, great court strategy and riflelike aim.  And he did
take pleasure in beating me, his junior by 23 years."

Rep.  Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.) has known Rumsfeld since 1962, when Hyde ran
for Congress in a district adjoining the 13th.  Hyde says that in 1980
he unsuccessfully urged Ronald Reagan to pick Rumsfeld to be his vice
presidential nominee. 

"While he's pleasant, he's all business," Hyde says of his fellow
Chicagoan.  "He's no-nonsense.  .  .  .  If he has a negative
impression, he'll let you know."

James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, worked with Rumsfeld for
almost a year in 1997 and 1998 on a commission assessing missile
threats.  Woolsey downplayed Rumsfeld's reputation as a brusque man. 

"You can still see the football and wrestling captain from Princeton:
He's the kind of guy other people naturally turn to to lead them,"
Woolsey said.  "Don doesn't just tolerate disagreement and discussion,
he actively solicits it.  .  .  .  He's always teasing people, not
aggressively.  .  .  .  He's decisive, but he's not brusque."

An equally positive assessment comes from Cissy Baker, daughter of
former Sen.  Howard Baker (R.-Tenn.) and Washington bureau chief for
Tribune Broadcasting.  "At home, he was jovial, warm, sensitive," says
Baker, a friend of the Rumsfelds and their three children -- Valerie,
Marcie and Nick -- since the 1960s.  "He was really quite attentive to
you as a person.  And that kind of steely personality that comes over in
a news conference or on the job is not at all what you see at home."
Whatever one makes of Rumsfeld, his selection by Bush, who was unhappy
with his initial short list of defense chief candidates, came as a
surprise.  Twenty-three years after Rumsfeld had been named the youngest
Pentagon boss ever, he became the oldest at 68. 

- - -
Given his record of leading athletes into action, transforming
companies, exercising leadership at the highest levels of government and
taking no prisoners while wearing a smile, it was said of Rumsfeld that
if he couldn't reform the immovable force of nature called the Pentagon,
nobody could.  And, perhaps, nobody can. 

When Rumsfeld's first tour at the Pentagon ended in 1977, the Cold War
still had more than a decade to go, and it was to be followed by a
decade of struggle in places like Iraq, Somalia and Serbia.  By the time
Rumsfeld returned to the building nearly a quarter-century later, he
admitted that he needed to catch up. 

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush had set everyone in the
defense world aflutter with his talk about a military "transformation."
But many, including, apparently, Rumsfeld, had a less-than-precise
notion of what transformation really meant.  The talk had centered
vaguely on smarter bombs, keener sensors and newer computers -- concepts
the brass had been discussing for years -- but specifics were in short
supply. 

To elicit ideas, Rumsfeld set up expert panels, which, with heavy
reliance on outsiders, operated behind closed doors.  The meetings of
these panels came to be called the "strategic review."

Despite high hopes, the strategic review dragged By June, it still
wasn't done.  And now, the press was told, it would be merged into yet
another study -- the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR, a top-to-bottom
analysis that Congress required by Sept.  30. 

June also brought release of an amended Pentagon budget.  It provided
only $18 billion more than President Clinton had called for, less than
half what Rumsfeld had requested of President Bush.  The Pentagon's
allies on the right were livid.  The conservative magazine The Weekly
Standard, in an editorial, said Rumsfeld's only honorable course was to
resign.  Not surprisingly, those of a more dovish persuasion thought the
$18 billion was too much. 

Meanwhile, the armed forces and defense contractors were feeling
excluded from Rumsfeld's decision-making process.  In a campaign to
undermine Rumsfeld, certain key generals and admirals let reporters know
about their angst, and soon the internal squabbles were splashed all
over the papers.  New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that
Rumsfeld had been "outfoxholed" by the military.  Joseph Laitin, whom
Rumsfeld fired as Pentagon spokesman in 1975, said "He (Rumsfeld) didn't
learn much from his first time around.  You can't run the Pentagon
unless you've got the joint chiefs on your side."

Congress, too, was angry.  Like the brass, many on the Hill felt they
were being cut out.  When Rumsfeld wanted to cut the B-1B Lancer bomber
fleet, he neglected to quietly run his idea by lawmakers before
unveiling it.  The Air Force secretary called the lack of consultations
"dumb." Furthermore, Rumsfeld's desire to close some domestic military
facilities earned him the enmity of legislators from the affected
regions. 

As if all this wasn't enough, Rumsfeld's plan to build a missile shield
was drawing flak inside and outside the country. 

Rumsfeld couldn't win.  He'd managed to rub everybody the wrong way,
more because of what he hadn't said than what he had.  "Don't
necessarily avoid sharp edges; sometimes they are necessary to
leadership," says one of Rumsfeld's Rules, a set of aphorisms on work
and life gathered through his many years of experience. 

But if sharp edges are necessary, Rumsfeld's edges seemed too sharp for
many in the capital. 

Then came Sept.  11. 
- - -

Instead of scurrying for cover after a jetliner hit the Pentagon,
Rumsfeld was seen trying to help the injured.  That was the start of his
new beginning. 

"Say what you will about the theatrics of it, he didn't run away from
trouble, he ran to it," says Time's Thompson.  "That made the Pentagon
and the military as a whole see this guy in a whole new light."

Rumsfeld's conduct of the war has earned him kudos -- for his capable
stewardship and articulation of U.S.  aims; for avoiding, where
possible, civilian casualties; for helping hold together a diverse
global coalition; and more. 

But qualms about Rumsfeld persist.  Several Pentagon officials contend
that the issues that divided Rumsfeld's team from the brass and the Hill
are still there -- they're just occupying less of Rumsfeld's and the
media's attention. 

Rumsfeld has imposed tight restrictions on information flow to the
press, and he's still "a real autocrat" on that score, one reporter
said.Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American
Century, a conservative foreign-policy think tank, said Rumsfeld's flaw
early on was that he "had a vague idea that he wanted to sort of change
things in the Pentagon -- but no specific idea." By contrast, he "knows
where the goal line is now."

William Schneider, a long-time associate of Rumsfeld's, was his
right-hand man during the administration's first few months.  He thinks
Rumsfeld's biggest problem last summer was that a lower-than-expected
Pentagon budget set people against one another. 

Schneider also said that the events of Sept.  11 have brought out
Rumsfeld's best. 

"None of his other managerial properties or policy acumen or other
skills that have come to the fore during this period of crisis were
engaged during that grim period of 90 days or so between June and early
September," Schneider said. 

Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, a non-partisan defense think tank in Washington,
was a member of one of the strategic-review panels.  He suspects that,
ultimately, Rumsfeld seems more suited to war than peace. 

"There's a difference between being secretary of defense, primarily
focusing on the management of the Pentagon, and being secretary of war,
which requires a different set of skills that are oriented on getting
results in a crisis environment," he said. 

One day, Rumsfeld will have to do another turnaround -- from being
secretary of war to again being the "SECDEF." Maybe he will have earned
enough goodwill and patience from his solid wartime performance to rule
the peacetime Pentagon more effectively. 

He'll just have to be a bit more mindful of playing by the rules.  John
Donnelly covers the Pentagon for Defense Week. 


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