Why Rumsfeld Matters
Within an administration whose objective is to create an identity and mold a personality, introspection rates no higher than dissent. Dissent requires a strong leader who can accommodate personal growth and change. During his administration, Bush has shown no capacity for either. Should Rumsfeld be asked to step down? I see that as at best a white-wash of deeper policy and leadership problems. Rumsfeld leaving would have value only if it were the product of Bush recognizing his policy errors and seeking a group of people who are better suited to admit mistakes and who represent new ideas that offer some hope for a positive resolution to the Iraqi crisis.
Why Rumsfeld Matters
President Bush’s steadfast support of Secretary Rumsfeld should come as little surprise to those who stand behind the President as well as those who grow increasingly frustrated at his unwillingness to admit mistakes. How President Bush is handling Rumsfeld is critical for two reasons: first, because it shows a deeper reticence on the part of the President to turn inward, a dangerous tendency when evidenced from leaders in positions of great power, and second, because it shows a desire on the part of President Bush to value loyalty above being right and to disavow himself of dissenting voices within his administration.
Even conservative members of the Republican Party blanched at the recent granting of three Presidential Medals of Freedom by President Bush to Paul Bremer, George Tenet, and General Tommy Franks. Some commentators have suggested that the medals were a calculated ploy on the part of the President and his political handlers to stymie the forthcoming “tell-alls” that each will write; tell-alls that promise to have more light to shed on the path that led to war, and the means by which the administration debated the wisdom and the factualness of the ideas and intelligence behind the decision itself.
What will these tell-alls illuminate most? We already know that the Bush Administration entered office with a preconceived ideology justifying going to war with Iraq; that is no longer up for debate. We already know that the Bush Administration, in particular Vice President Cheney, deliberately politicized the collection, interpretation and distribution of intelligence to ensure that war in Iraq could be justified; too many colossal factual errors are now obvious that could make this purely a matter of opinion. But, what we have only as passing anecdotal evidence are two dimensions to the Iraqi story that Bremer, Tenet and Franks can illustrate beyond question: that the means for justifying and the plan for carrying off the invasion and occupation of Iraq were equally flawed from the start, and secondly, that numerous opportunities existed for President Bush and his Administration to change tactics, only to refuse to do so out of a stubborn reluctance to reflect on strategy, and change when a mistake is obvious.
What supporters of Bush see as his greatest strength, his unwavering leadership style, is his unmitigated greatest weakness: his unwillingness to turn inward, reflect on decisions he has made, and learn from his mistakes. This is a realization that many people within the conservative movement are having as they watch President Bush hand select people for his cabinet who have little experience and credentials for such an office other than the fact that they are loyalists, and can be counted on to stay away from dissent or disagreement with “the man.”
I have been profoundly uncomfortable with President Bush as a leader since he first began his presidential primary in 2000. To me, I saw a man whose inability to communicate came not from a stumbling style of speech, but rather an unwillingness to trouble himself with details such as policy and ideology, making him potentially very malleable in the hands of ideologues. Where some saw the average man, I saw sloppiness. I knew nothing of the neo-conservative movement at the time, but would suggest that we have this ideology, not only the events of 9/11, to account for Bush’s change from a traditional conservative policy of limited foreign engagement (even in the case of atrocities) to an assertive foreign policy that has pre-emption as its central doctrine. The presidential primary version of Bush argued against the internationalism behind the UN and its proposed involvement in Rwanda and actual involvement in Somalia. 9/11 is not the only reason Bush has changed so much; Bush is a man whose ideological construct is largely shapeless - a realization Vice President Cheney must have had when he nominated himself as his own best choice for Bush’s VP. Bush is not the ideologue behind Iraq any more than he is the genius behind the courting of certain religious activists in the last election. In an increasingly fractured America, a candidate that can be molded to fit the mood of the day will win; a candidate with a pronounced domestic or international record is not yet what we crave. One day we will, but that day lies on the other side of further difficulties and grave mistakes.
Within an administration whose objective is to create an identity and mold a personality, introspection rates no higher than dissent. Dissent requires a strong leader who can accommodate personal growth and change. During his administration, Bush has shown no capacity for either. Should Rumsfeld be asked to step down? I see that as at best a white-wash of deeper policy and leadership problems. Rumsfeld leaving would have value only if it were the product of Bush recognizing his policy errors and seeking a group of people who are better suited to admit mistakes and who represent new ideas that offer some hope for a positive resolution to the Iraqi crisis.
Rumsfeld holds direct responsibility for the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal; but so does President Bush who elected to listen to Attorney General in-waiting Gonzalez’s argument that the President could circumvent the Geneva Convention. Bush can take issue with Rumsfeld only if he first admits the heinous nature of his own mistake, something Bush is both unwilling and unable to do. Rumsfeld holds direct responsibility for the dramatic downplaying of the risks related to invading Iraq; risks that I fear were as hidden from the President as they were from the American people. Here again, Bush can no more easily take issue with Rumsfeld than he can with himself. To admit that the situation in Iraq was then as complex as it is now would be to admit that he overlooked critical questions that as President he should have been asking. These questions would have led to a realization, I believe, that an invasion might leave behind a more unstable regime in Iraq whose threat to America is greater than when we first invaded. Rumsfeld holds direct responsibility for fighting the war and attempting to win the peace “on the cheap.” Decisions of prioritization - a core responsibility within executive leadership - have been botched by Rumsfeld. Is it a crime that our military does not have the armor they need? Yes, if viewed within the context of our multi-billion dollar, already-obsolete ballistic missile shield. Decisions of prioritization were made that someone is accountable for. The troops not having sufficient armor is another sad mistake; a miscalculation that is but one of a broader set of miscalculations about WMD’s, being greeted as peacemakers, and of how a sovereign democracy would establish itself in a war-torn country with no such history. And here again President Bush can no more easily hold Rumsfeld accountable than he can himself. To recognize that Rumsfeld seriously under-estimated every dimension to this conflict would be to recognize a similar pathology on his own part. As we know from the infamous and fortunately rare presidential press conference, Bush can think of no mistakes he has made.
Let me for a moment digress and criticize those such as myself who vehemently disagree with President Bush; we have obligations to ourselves and our country-men in how we handle ourselves during these disagreements. We have a responsibility to disagree in a way that is gracious, allowing for those who disagree with us to cut through the politics and anger, and be reasoned with. We must disagree in a way that allows our leaders to admit mistakes and change course. As citizens we all have a responsibility to be involved in the dialogue that shapes our policies. How we participate can, at times, matter as much as what we choose to say when we participate. If we choose to demand retribution and tear down those who are finally proven to be wrong, we only ensure that increasingly brittle and non-insightful leaders such as Bush will come along; we will in fact get that which we least need. I fear greatly the anti-war movement’s resistance to the war on the basis of the fact that it is painful. There will be moments in our country’s future when hard things demand sacrifice, even that of the lives of our fellow countrymen. To disagree with policies that are painful is to establish as a standard in the minds of some that what is difficult is wrong. I also fear that some within the anti-war movement wake up each morning and view with a cynical glee the newest casualty count from Iraq as further evidence of the wrongness of this war. Smugness and death are poor companions and will sit poorly in the minds of Americans who rightly question the war.
As a society, it would be wise of us all to reflect on why it is that a leader who refuses to turn inward is so appealing to us. Some accuse America of egregious foreign policy decisions that have led others to justifiably hate us. Whether or not that is true is not my point: rather, my point is to ask us if we can afford to turn inwards and ask ourselves the hardest of questions. Can we, as a country, afford to admit we were wrong? That we have made mistakes? Or are we, much like our President, when forced to admit to our errors caught like a deer in the headlights, unable to think of even one thing that we have done wrong? If so, we should remember that the metaphor of the deer ends badly, leaving deer, driver and car in much worse shape than when each realized a problem was in the making. The Greek philosophers of antiquity taught that only the self-examined life was worth leading. The world will rest more safely when leaders who can set aside politics, pride and self-preservation in the interests of self-examination hold themselves to this same standard.
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“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
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