Gunning For Rummy

The Left (especially those in the Antique Media) hate Bush and Cheney. But pulling up a strong number three is SecDef Donald Rumsfeld. Now a bunch of retired Generals suffering from a wicked case of "hindsight-itis" - and many with an axe to grind - are running around criticizing Rumsfeld's decisions and leadership style. M'kay.

Hey, it's a free country and these guys are literally "arm-chair Generals" now. But, notwithstanding the Media's attempt to use this meme to somehow force Rumsfeld's "retirement" (which they would see as a major victory on their part against the Administration), the Editors at National Review Online are skeptical about the effectiveness of the nit-picks of these monday-morning quarterbacks.

"...the criticisms of Rumsfeld don’t have much force. Some say he is too imperious. This charge isn’t hard to believe of the strong-willed Rumsfeld, but it is disappointing that generals are apparently so easily cowed that their only recourse when dealing with a muscular Defense secretary is to whine about it after the fact. Others complain about his “micro-management” of the war. It is true that Rumsfeld has exercised a remarkably strong hand in dealing with the military. In planning for the initial Iraq invasion in particular, he was relentless in challenging the work of CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, driving him to come up with a plan that wasn’t just an unimaginative repeat of Desert Storm. The plan didn’t suffer from Rumsfeld’s intense attention; in fact, the opposite was the case. Even such Rumsfeld critics as Cobra II authors Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor credit the innovation and effectiveness of the invasion.

As a matter of principle, micromanagement from a Defense secretary is not a bad thing, even if Robert McNamara gave it a bad name during the Vietnam War. Our system is based on the U.S. military’s taking direction from civilian leadership. There is no reason to think that the assumption behind the micromanagement criticism of Rumsfeld — that if only the generals had been left to their own devices, things would have turned out fine — is true. Rumsfeld should actually be faulted for not micromanaging Tommy Franks enough when it came to planning for postwar operations, in which the general had little or no interest."

The credence that the Media lends to these ex-Generals is fascinating when you consider how they would react if this was a Democrat Administration. You can just bet that they'd be appalled at the idea of any military official thinking they had any right to lecture our civilian-controlled government on foreign policy. When a Democrat is in the White House, the Left sees the military as a bunch of trigger-happy warmongers who think nothing of sending young men and women off to die for their wars of aggression. But when it's a Republican President, they find any General - from Wesley Clarke to John Batiste - willing to criticize him or his Administration and all of a sudden they portray the elected civilians as the ones undermining the military. What a crock!

Posted by: Gary at 11:15 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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