People who know me might imagine that I would be pleased at the criticism of Rumsfeld, since much of it has been criticism that I have had about the war, a war that I thought was too risky in the first place. In fact I think Rumsfeld is probably right about many things that he will ultimately carry the can.
Of all the hawks, Rumsfeld is the only one I have any time for – he has the personality that the spin doctors try to give Bush – he is a straight talker who does not like bureaucratic bullshit or state run inefficiency. His approach to the military is like a CEO from the private sector coming in to run an anachronistic public utility.
The war is clearly not going according to plan, and because Rumsfeld went against the advice of some of the military the responsibility rests with him and the alternatives will now come from the generals.
So what are the generals saying exactly? They are saying that they need more troops and more artillery and they need to shore up the supply lines. This is all absolutely correct, but what if the supply line hadn’t been a line in the first place. Light infantry can be supported from the air. We are seeing an enemy that has become decentralized in such a way that conventional military tactics won’t work, and yet the military response is to shore up a conventional approach.
But what do I know – nothing, except that the military is by its very nature conservative. What we are faced with in Iraq is an enemy that has a different way of fighting and it will take people who challenge the orthodoxy to adapt a response.
In the First World War thousands of British troops died because general Haig said the machine gun was ‘a vastly overrated weapon’, refused to use it and instead increased the amount of conventional charges against the Germans who were using their versions of this weapon to devastating advantage.
Rumsfeld favored a ‘lightweight’ approach to battle and this was successful in Afghanistan, I have a nagging feeling that the real problem with Iraq is that the plan is actually not Rumsfeldian enough.