A Warrior Lays Down His Arms

There weren't many people in the Pentagon brave enough to give bad news to Donald Rumsfeld. Jim Roche, though, was one. The Air Force secretary and his boss shared Chicago roots and Washington ties going back 30 years--and, like Rummy, the white-haired Roche had made a lot of money in business. In the fall of 2002 it was becoming clear inside the Pentagon that George W. Bush intended to invade Iraq. A worried Roche dragooned the then Army secretary, Thomas White, to join him for a frank talk with Rumsfeld, according to a knowledgeable source who asked for anonymity because he was describing a private conversation. With some trepidation, the pair marched up to Rummy's elaborate dark-paneled office in the E-Ring, the power corridor of the Pentagon. "Don, you do realize that Iraq could be another Vietnam?" Roche asked. Rumsfeld, a political survivor of the Watergate era whose main goal was to exorcise the ghost of Vietnam forever--restoring American power and prestige in the world--was outraged at the very suggestion. "Vietnam? You think you have to tell me about Vietnam?" Rumsfeld sputtered. "Of course it won't be Vietnam. We are going to go in, overthrow Saddam, get out. That's it." Then he waved them out of his office.

Now Rumsfeld himself has been thrown out after six stormy years, a chastened if still-proud man who will spend the rest of his days grappling with the judgment of history. His tenure at the Pentagon is thick with irony. The squinty-eyed tough guy whom Bush once described as a "matinee idol," the podium wit who declared "I don't do quagmires," is now viewed as the author of one of the worst quagmires in American history. The "forward-leaning" ex-wrestler who wanted to project American strength abroad may now be blamed by historians for revealing the limits of American power--and weakening the nation's position in the critical Middle East.

When Rumsfeld arrived to take over the Pentagon for the second time in January 2001 he acted like a man on a mission. Rumsfeld came equipped with a glittering résumé: Princeton wrestling captain. Naval aviator. Congressman at 30. White House chief of staff at 42. Defense secretary at 43 (the youngest ever, way back in 1975). Fortune 500 CEO and turnaround specialist. And with 30 years of global experience, Rumsfeld had a clear vision for Defense. He wanted to draw down America's giant cold-war garrisons around the world and transform the U.S. military into a high-tech, "agile" force suited for expeditionary warfare around the globe.

Rumsfeld actually achieved a good part of this vision. He elevated the role and size of Special Forces, turning them into a separate worldwide command. He gave Special Operations--the global SWAT teams of the 21st century--the lead in the war against terrorism. He changed the way the Army and Navy operate worldwide, making both services more nimble. Finally, Rumsfeld began a profound shift of America's basic military approach to threats abroad, away from the old requirement of fighting three wars simultaneously (for example, in North Korea, Europe and the Mideast) and toward a new force organized to face unknowable contingencies.

But much of that transformational work may be forgotten in the history books. Instead, largely thanks to Iraq, Rumsfeld will likely go down as an erratic and arrogant manager who sullied America's reputation by allowing interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run detention centers abroad; who haughtily dismissed advice from U.S. generals and senators alike to put in enough troops (in part because he didn't want another Vietnam), and who preferred to deny the reality of the Iraqi insurgency rather than confront it. Bush, in announcing Rumsfeld's departure last week, called him "a superb leader in a time of change." But that is a distinctly minority view in Washington, where it is hard to find any defenders of Rumsfeld, either Democrat or Republican. "He will be seen as the Robert McNamara of this generation," says retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, referring to the Vietnam-era Defense chief who has spent the last 40 years trying live down the carnage that occurred on his watch.

Rumsfeld himself is all too aware of this view, his associates say. That is one reason he wanted to stay on at the Pentagon through Bush's second term. Rumsfeld was hoping that by then things might have turned for the better in Iraq. Instead, Bush told Rumsfeld last week that enough was enough. If the violence in Iraq does abate over the last two years of Bush's term, credit will now go to Rummy's successor, Robert Gates, rather than to him.

Some of Rumsfeld's critics also say that much of his transformation was superficial. He was unable to pare down U.S. nuclear forces despite Bush's pledge to do so, sponsoring giant budgets filled with cold-war-era weapons. And they say he was unpardonably negligent in his handling of the central issue of his tenure, Iraq, which is likely to be the subject of fresh inquiries by the Democratic-controlled Congress. "Rumsfeld demanded responsibility for all of postwar Iraq and then did nothing with it," says a former senior Defense official who spoke anonymously "because I have to work in this town." "He tried to destroy the interagency process. And I think he was successful."

Historians will probably argue for decades over who gets most of the blame for the mistakes made in Iraq. But Rumsfeld's talent for bureaucratic infighting did work against success there. He offended allies, played down the State Department's role in planning for postwar Iraq and actively stymied Condoleezza Rice's efforts to do her first-term job as national-security adviser, which was to coordinate between agencies, according to numerous accounts. Sometimes he didn't even return her calls. "Rumsfeld treated Condi like the hired help," says a White House staffer who would discuss the relationship only if he was not identified. "He did everything he could to humiliate her. And the president never intervened." Two weeks ago, Iraq inspector general Stuart Bowen concluded that the Pentagon is still not working well with State in coordinating Provincial Reconstruction Teams, on which the administration once placed high hopes in Iraq.

Rumsfeld was not blind about Iraq. He foresaw clearly the pitfalls of a long foreign occupation. He planned to reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq to some 30,000 troops within months of the March 2003 invasion; if he'd had his way, he would have quickly handed over power to the Iraqis. "The secretary saw the Iraq war as his best chance to force the U.S. Army to abandon its cold-war model of a massive buildup taking months--what they did in Gulf War I--and move to a swifter, leaner way of operating," says one of his former top aides who would discuss him only anonymously. But once it became clear that Bush wanted a deeper democratic transformation of Iraq--one that would require a longer occupation--Rumsfeld failed to adjust. And that may be history's bottom line on his troubled tenure.