At the Hudson Institute a couple of weeks ago, Donald Rumsfeld looked comfortable. Surrounded by former Defense Department colleagues at a panel discussion on "The Pentagon During the Rumsfeld Era," he was in his element. When it was his turn to speak, he joked, "I now go to work with the panel I have" -- an oblique reference to his much criticized statement during the Iraq War, "You go to war with the army you have."
After several years out of the public eye, Rumsfeld is back, making the rounds on the weekday talk-show circuit with his memoir in tow. While Known and Unknown, which largely focuses on his five years as secretary of defense under George W. Bush, was written well before there was even a hint that the Arab Spring was coming, Rumsfeld's re-emergence comes at an opportune time. As the history of the Bush wars begins to crystallize and the U.S. has thrown its support behind popular uprisings in the Arab world, Rumsfeld is defending the use of military to force to bring about regime change. Using recent U.S. interventions in the Middle East as a prism, he is trying to shape his own legacy, largely synonymous with the Iraq War.
During the panel, Rumsfeld explained what he set out to do in writing his book. "Rather than rewriting history, we want to write history and try to correct what [Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre] calls the 'first draft of history,'" he said.
Yet something deeper than just writing history is going on in the book Rumsfeld released Feb. 8. There is an implicit attempt to come out in front of history, shedding light on the successes and shifting blame for the failures in light of the current administration's interventionist approach to foreign affairs.
"The Bush administration is saying: 'We told you so,'" says Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who focuses on national security issues in the Middle East.
This isn't exactly a new strategy. Once out of office, all former administration officials seek to shape their legacy. Presidents from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton have released memoirs that discuss their time in office. Rumsfeld's predecessor under Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, Robert McNamara, released a book about his successes and failures in Vietnam.
"It's hard to disassociate yourself from everything that you've worked on for months and years when you're working intensely and believing in what you're doing," Katulis says.
But what is different about the Bush administration is that, in comparison to previous administrations, more of its former members are publishing -- and sooner. Rumsfeld is joined by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, President Bush, and, soon, Dick Cheney.
What this reflects is the Bush administration's particular fear that the Iraq War will be remembered for the disaster it was -- and a desperate attempt to rewrite the story.
By now, we all know the story line that Rumsfeld clings to: Intelligence said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them. Rumsfeld still maintains that the Bush administration did not mislead the public on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He argues that he and "other senior administration officials also did a reasonably good job of representing the intelligence community's assessments accurately in their public comments about Iraqi WMD, despite some occasionally imperfect formulations."
This talk, paired with Rumsfeld's recent talk-show appearances, makes clear how Rumsfeld plans to use Libya as a tool to get everyone else to agree with the success of Iraq. He further argues that Moammar Gadhafi does not have weapons of mass destruction today because of the invasion in Iraq. The argument is that Gadhafi gave up his weapons program because of the overthrow of Saddam. "I think probably getting rid of Libya's nuclear program was a major accomplishment of the Bush administration," Rumsfeld said on This Week on March 27.
Rumsfeld's thought process is clear: Gadhafi is, of course, a bad man. Intervention is, of course, necessary. But the Obama administration is going about it all wrong. Libya just does not follow the framework of a preemptive strike. In Libya, the objectives aren't clear, no one knows if Gadhafi will stay or go, and the United States should be taking a leadership role. The lack of congressional approval is deplorable.
The implicit assumption is that our actions regarding Libya pale in comparison to the authoritative way we handled Iraq. In Iraq, the U.S. led the invasion, there were clear objectives, Saddam needed to go. On CNN's John King USA, Rumsfeld even slipped, saying, "As long as we don't give clarity that Saddam Hus -- Gadhafi will be gone, then there's a problem."
Rumsfeld's followers are anxious to agree with him, taking their case to newspapers and weekly talk shows. The fact that the Obama administration isn't following the framework laid out by the war in Iraq is what most irks the neocons opining on it. Paul Wolfowitz harps on the lack of quick, decisive action. Karl Rove points out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the "Coalition of the Willing" that entered into Iraq in 2003 was substantially larger than the coalition President Barack Obama has secured to intervene in Libya. He largely misses the point that Obama was able to get United Nations and NATO approval before his use of military force.
But even if the intervention in Libya ends how the war hawks are hoping it will, with the overthrow of Gadhafi, which is looking unlikely, the realities of Iraq will still remain. Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. He did not have ties to al-Qaeda. Nearly 6,000 U.S. soldiers and countless Iraqi citizens died during the invasion and occupation. U.S. troops are still deployed in Iraq, eight years after the war. These facts will not change regardless of what Bush officials write in their books.
In trying to use the current political moment to his advantage, Rumsfeld glosses over the realities of Iraq and the complexities of U.S. engagement in Libya. His book makes the key point that decision-makers do not always know everything. Being in the room does not always provide clarity. The information received is imperfect, and outcomes cannot always be predicted. Perhaps he and his cohorts should keep this in mind when admonishing their successors.
