The New Republic has published an entertainingly savage review of the memoirs of Donald Rumsfeld, whom the reviewer calls "one of the two worst secretaries of defense ever":
The book is certainly revealing, but mainly in ways that are unintentional and unflattering. It does help to answer the riddle of how someone who seemed so supremely qualified for high office—a man who had served previously as a congressman (in the 1960s), White House aide and NATO ambassador (for Richard Nixon), White House chief of staff and secretary of defense (for Gerald Ford), and corporate chieftain —how a man with such a sterling resumé could be such a miserable failure in managing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which we were losing by the time he left office.
It's hardly surprising to see such sentiments about Rumsfeld, for whom the term "discredited" seems grossly inadequate. What might be initially surprising is the identity of the reviewer: not a Bush administration critic but neocon's neocon Max Boot.
And yet, when you think about it, this makes sense. Rumsfeld did an enormous amount to bring neocon doctrine into disrepute. And, moreover, blaming the Iraq fiasco on Rumsfeld conveniently lets Boot and other war supporters off the hook for what was a really dumb idea in principle. It's a variant of what Matt Yglesias and Sam Rosenfeld called "the incompetence dodge." It's also worth noting that as the war plan was actually being executed, Boot thought Rumsfeld's work was great -- it was only after the war turned unpopular that Boot thought to blame it all on the hapless secretary of defense. This doesn't make his critique of Rumsfeld wrong, but it's not only Rumsfeld who would benefit from some introspection about his mistakes.
