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by Mike Whitney
 Donald Rumsfeld never really understood the war he was fighting in Iraq. That’s why the results have been so terrible. He liked to say that “the war in Iraq is a test of wills”, but that just showsthat he had no idea what he was doing and was in way over his head.
War shouldn’t be personalized; that just makes it a battle of egoswhich inevitably clouds one’s judgment. War is a means of using organized violence to achieve political objectives. Period. Rumsfeld never really grasped that point, so it was impossible for him to prevail. His statement just shows the shortsightedness of a man who is incapable of thinking politically and therefore wasn't able to appreciate the larger strategic goals.
For people like Rumsfeld, violence and deception are the natural corollaries of their distorted views; they become an end in themselves. That is not only tragic, but it also ensures failure. According to the recently released Lancet report, over 650,000 Iraqis have been killed in the conflict so far. This proves that Rumsfeld didn’t know what he was doing so he simply ratcheted up the violence to conceal his ignorance. He had no plan for occupation, reconstruction, security, or victory. The whole thing was a sham predicated on his unflagging belief in over-whelming force. The outcome was not only predictable; it was predicted! Now, the country in a shambles, the society is irretrievably ripped apart, and the entire project is in ruins.
In his parting statement, Rumsfeld reiterated his belief that we are facing a “new kind of enemy” in a “new kind of war”. But this is just more buck-passing from a guy who wouldn’t listen to his subordinates and was thoroughly convinced of his own genius. Anyone who has seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib and Falluja are already familiar with Rumsfeld’s genius and his insatiable appetite for violence. They also know that, to great extent, he is fully responsible for the unspeakable tragedy that is currently unfolding in Iraq.
Besides, Rumsfeld is mistaken; we are not fighting a “new
kind of enemy or a new kind of war”. The fundamentals of 4-G guerilla
warfare are well known as are the strategies for combating them.
Rumsfeld’s problem is that, rather than follow the advice of his
generals who understand the nature of asymmetrical warfare; he chose to
implement his own untested theories which consistently ended in
disaster.
To his credit, he had a fairly decent plan for controlling the flow of
information coming from the front (“embedded” journalists) and for
quashing unflattering news-coverage. In fact, the DOD’s
media-management strategy has been the most successful part of the
war-effort. The American people have been effectively blocked from
seeing the same kind of bloody-footage that flooded their TV screens a
generation earlier during the Vietnam War. We haven’t seen the carnage,
the body-bags, the flag-draped coffins; the wounded, maimed or killed
civilians who are, of course, the greatest victims of the present
policy.
In other words, the Iraq War has been a huge triumph for perception-management and censorship.
Score 1 for Rummy.
The media has played no role in undermining support for the war. Rather
it has been the steady deterioration of the security situation, the
up-tick in sectarian violence, and the absence of any tangible
“benchmarks” for progress which left the American people believing that
we were hopelessly trapped in another quagmire. At this point, no
amount of media cheerleading will convince the public that the war is
anything more than a dead-loss.
Rumsfeld saw himself as a master technician, singularly capable of
tip-toeing through the abstruse details of his “new type of war” while
developing entirely original tactics. Naturally, he favored
blitzkrieg-type military maneuvers and massive, destabilizing
counterinsurgency operations, both of which have had a catastrophic
effect on Iraqi society thrusting the country into “ungovernable”
anarchy.
Was that the point?
Rumsfeld seemed to believe that if he spread chaos throughout Iraq
(“creative destruction”) US occupation forces would eventually come out
on top. The policy is a reworking of the covert operations (The
Contras) which were used in Central America during the Reagan
administration. The basic concept is to use extreme violence (El
Salvador option) against enemy suspects in a way that discourages
others from joining the fight. That’s shorthand for “terrorism” which,
of course, the US does not officially support.
Some critics suggested that the strategies which worked in Central
America would not succeed in Iraq for various cultural and historic
reasons. They turned out to be right; "one size does not fit all".The
Iraqis are fiercely independent, proud, nationalistic, and hostile to
all manifestations of imperial rule. Although Iraqi society has begun
to splinter, the violence has only intensified as more and more people
find refuge in tribal groups and well-armed militias. This has caused a
steady rise in the number of attacks on American forces. It has also
made the country completely unmanageable. Iraqis are not cowed by
imperial violence. They are not the submissive, compliant sheeple that
Rumsfeld imagined. This is another tragic misreading of history.
There is no antidote for the continuing crisis in Iraq. The inevitable
American withdrawal will only hasten the looming battle between the
competing political forces. It’s better to get out now and allow that
process to begin.
Political pundits and historians will undoubtedly be harsh on Rumsfeld
for his iron-fisted methods of trying to establish order, but occupying
Iraq would have been difficult, if not impossible, under the best of
circumstances. Rumsfeld’s poor decision-making sped up the process but,
ultimately, the project was doomed from the beginning.
Ironically, Rumsfeld still refuses to accept any responsibility for the
hundreds of thousands of casualties or the completebreakdown of Iraqi
society. Instead, he has brushed aside any blame saying that Iraq is
too “complicated” for normal people to understand.
Even after being forced to resign in utter disgrace, he still shows no
sign of doubting his abilities as a military genius. His ego remains as
impervious to criticism as tempered steel.
But the facts don’t lie. Rumsfeld was given the best-equipped,
best-trained, high-tech, military machine the world has ever seen. He
was given unlimited political and financial support and a ringing
endorsement by the American media. All that was expected of him was to
establish security and execute the smooth transferal of power from a
"widely-despised" tyrant to a provisional government. At the same time,
he was supposed to put down an “insurgency”, which (by the Pentagon’s
own estimates) included no more than 5 or 6,000 “Islamic extremists and
dead-enders”.
He failed completely.
Towards the end of his tenure, he became so desperate that he began to
blame leftist web sites and “bloggers” for the escalating violence in
Iraq.
If there isan “up-side” to the Rumsfeld saga, it is this. If it wasn’t
for Rumsfeld’ssheer incompetence in every area of supervising the
occupation, the Bush administration would have pressed on with their
plans for toppling the regimes in Tehran and Damascus.
Rumsfeld’s ineptitude, along with the tenacity and steadfastness of the
Iraqi resistance, has made that prospect seem far less likely.
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