Mr. Rumsfeld

Mr. Rumsfeld

Saturday, November 25, 2006

The Fourth Estate was disappointing this past week because there was no mention whatsoever of John F. Kennedy—no ceremonies on television to memorialize the former president. The Fourth Estate was apparently busy with other matters that they believed were more important than President Kennedy. It is a sign of our times.

One story the Fourth Estate has been busy promoting is the resignation of Secretary of Defense, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld. The Fourth Estate has been going after Mr. Rumsfeld for years. Democracies can be tricky like that because democracies will attack producers in favor of believing that it is a progressive decision that will lead to desired change. The Fourth Estate never explained how the resignation of Mr. Rumsfeld would help US national security, so Americans will have to take their word for it based on faith that it will be a positive change, even though the Fourth Estate is very defensive when words such as “faith” are used in combination with their work.

I am not particularly convinced that Americans really understand the great work that has been accomplished by Mr. Rumsfeld during his term as Secretary of Defense of the US Armed Forces. To me, Americans are more apt to believe the persistent media angle that things were not necessarily going very well in Iraq, so a change had to be made. Why Mr. Rumsfeld was the target for such change we will leave to history. The Fourth Estate wanted Mr. Rumsfeld out because the media believed that if Mr. Rumsfeld resigned that some type of change would dramatically appear in Iraq as a result of his resignation. When things go poorly as the media defines them, a resignation is necessary. When a member of the US government resigns under constant media pressure and scrutiny, the media can go home and sleep better thinking that their model of bully-pulpit governance is working and the same media just had to get elected officials to believe that they knew what was best for the country.

Now that Mr. Rumsfeld has resigned, it is too late to prepare him an adequate defense from the Fourth Estate, not that it would have mattered anyway. Media and reason bound together do not provide each other a decent respect when media is going after a government official. It is quite possible that any reasoned argument in favor of keeping Mr. Rumsfeld on the job would have been drowned out by the media’s decision to oust him, considering the efforts that the media deployed to make that happen. The mission of media to force Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation was a feeding frenzy as media sought to create at least one cabinet-level casualty from the midterm US elections. Mr. Rumsfeld himself must have known long ago that media was sizing him up over the years because he was a producer, even if the media never understood the full scope of what Mr. Rumsfeld had accomplished for US national security and the American people.

Out of respect for Mr. Rumsfeld I have devoted this article to discuss some of the issues that will resonate as Mr. Secretary Rumsfeld’s legacy for decades to come. Mr. Rumsfeld will be judged very well by history. The Fourth Estate will not agree, but I will use truth as my guide to give the reader a vision of the future.

Missile Defense: No one pushed harder for an American missile defense system than Secretary Rumsfeld. Years before the North Korean regime in Pyongyang ordered the North Korean nuclear test on October 9, 2006, Secretary Rumsfeld’s forward-thinking vision pushed for an American-developed anti-ballistic missile defense to protect the American homeland from hostile nation-states and other rogue elements that were seeking to create nuclear weapons and delivery systems for nuclear warheads.

Under intense pressure from a hostile media and other special interest groups that claimed missile defense systems were “too costly”, “impossible” to develop, and would create an “arms race”, Mr. Rumsfeld did not sway from his belief that missile defense was a necessary option for US national security. Secretary Rumsfeld understood that a new arms race in North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and other states was already underway whether or not the United States was going to develop and deploy an anti-ballistic missile defense system. It made perfect sense to Mr. Rumsfeld that the United States should spare no expense nor technological effort to develop such a system to protect and defend US cities from nuclear missile attack.

Even today along the West Coast of the United States, liberal politicians, liberal organizations such as environmental groups and others now admit that Secretary Rumsfeld was correct in his forward-thinking planning about US anti-ballistic missile defense. American cities along the West Coast of the United States would be the first to benefit from such a defense because those cities are now the first to be targeted by North Korean Taepo-dong II nuclear missiles under North Korea’s nuclear umbrella war-planning policy.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld got it right on missile defense and history will never forget.

Units of Action: One of the more controversial measures that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has undertaken is the restructuring of US Army heavy and light infantry divisions into a new battlefield concept known as the “Unit of Action”. The Unit of Action concept came about because Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld figured out that the US military had too many military resources tied up into old thinking and old fighting tactics. Heavy divisions of tanks and other Cold War military units were of little use in fighting an unconventional guerilla war against a transnational terrorist enemy. While painful to the General Officers that disagreed with the plan to create and transform US military units into the new Units of Action concept, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan proved that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was once again correct in thinking about the global security situation and how US military involvement against terrorist forces around the world could be more successful.

Many General Officers critical of Mr. Rumsfeld did not appreciate those changes. The alarm expressed by the Fourth Estate and other special interest groups that believed that compromising with our terrorist enemies was better than fighting them also did not agree with the concept changes to the US Army specifically. In the end however, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was right.

The modern army of the 21^st Century must learn Military Science on the modern battlefield. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was a new battlefield experience for US soldiers and those that commanded those forces. A Cold War army was not prepared for the challenges of insurgency warfare. Only a lighter, more mobile force would prove to be capable of fighting such a conflict. Negotiating with America’s terrorist enemies around the world also would not prepare our armed forces for the global conflict against terrorism. In war, armies learn by doing, by engaging the enemy on the battlefield and learning the strategies and tactics of that enemy.

Again, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld got it right.

Battlefield Troop Strength: Another ongoing debate that has been raging within the Fourth Estate and other political factions in Washington, DC, is the debate over deployed troop strength during the War on Terrorism. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has applied a very specific and successful Military Science formula regarding troop strength levels deployed to war zones around the world. Many individuals within the Fourth Estate and other special interest groups connected to the media have endlessly complained that the United States needs more boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to secure our nation’s objectives there.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are insurgent terrorist wars against the United States that are conducting asymmetrical attacks upon US forces. What this means is that the greater the number of US troops exposed to the kill zones constructed by hostile insurgent forces, the greater the number of casualties that will be produced in the war. Mr. Rumsfeld had the foresight to understand that in a guerilla war, the smaller force is the most efficient force. If Secretary Rumsfeld ordered greater troop numbers into Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, those forces would be exponentially exposed to hostile insurgent improvised explosive devices, mortar attacks and other hostile enemy fire that would cause drastic increases in the numbers and severity of US casualties on the battlefield.

What Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has achieved in creating this new segment of Military Science is that insurgent warfare requires a lighter force and a smaller force to minimize exposure to hostile enemy operations while at the same time allowing the United States to constrict the battlefield space and cause an attrition effect upon enemy forces. If the United States deployed troops in great numbers inside Iraq for example, hostile insurgent forces would tie up the resources of our military simply by creating an exponential rise in the numbers of casualties that our forces would suffer as the enemy avoided our soldiers in strength and merely committed asymmetrical terrorist attacks upon those units.

Secretary Rumsfeld made an outstanding call by structuring the war in Iraq in this way and history will judge it rightly.

Now that Secretary Rumsfeld has resigned and a new Secretary of Defense is about to take his place, there must be one more historic account to make, and that is derived from Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation announcement in the oval office. The media did not understand what Mr. Rumsfeld was talking about during his resignation speech, but for history it is important that it is explored.

Rumsfeld mentioned Winston Churchill and how the former British Prime Minister was misunderstood by the people and government of Britain in the early 1930s when Churchill was warning about National Socialism and its dangerous fascism. The British people in those days were unconcerned about that and more concerned about Neville Chamberlain’s mission to Germany and his subsequent announcement after that mission that Britain had secured peace with Hitler. The jubilant British public and politicians celebrated Chamberlain’s efforts while Winston Churchill was dismissed and Churchill’s declarations were at that time ignored.

That is what Mr. Rumsfeld was talking about during his resignation speech and no one in the media understood what he was talking about. The media just didn’t get it.

When Adolf Hitler marched his armies into Poland on September 1, 1939, a new mood struck the British people. From the shadows and with great humility a revived Winston Churchill stood to lead the British people through the war to victory. Churchill had been right about Hitler, and even though the British people did not want to believe it, Churchill never left their side.

On Friday, November 24, 2006, the European Union announced that it was considering installing an anti-ballistic missile defense system comparable to the one that the United States has deployed to defend the American people. The European Union can sense that a nuclear-armed Iran with intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris and Rome is a very grave security condition. Given the European persistence to not even finance NATO objectives completely, their announcement to create an anti-ballistic missile defense system for the European Union was surprising.

Or maybe it is not surprising, and simply recognition that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld got it right, and like Churchill, someday we just may need Mr. Rumsfeld’s leadership again.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

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