Secretary Of War Donald Rumsfeld

DONALD RUMSFELD COMES ALIVE IN BATTLE, WHICH MADE HIM A BRILLIANT ARCHITECT OF THE IRAQ WAR. BUT IS THE SHARP- ELBOWED FIGHTER READY FOR THE PEACE?

By Michael Duffy and Mark Thompson Monday, Dec. 29, 2003
    • WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY

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    What feels like sport to Rumsfeld is more like a blood sport to those who have to face him. They describe a man who "listens aggressively," who wants to watch you take a punch and see how you react. "He really does want to smack you," says an aide. "From that, he thinks, 'I will learn something I don't know and you weren't planning to teach me.' The truth might not tumble out of you otherwise."

    It was in a series of such back-and-forth sessions that Rumsfeld crafted the war on Iraq. Normally, combatant commanders like former Centcom chief General Tommy Franks would take their plans to Washington for quick approval; under Rumsfeld, Franks had to redraw them repeatedly. Other generals were alarmed to see a Defense Secretary get so far down in the weeds of a military operation. Not since Robert McNamara's Pentagon had civilian authority reached so deeply into the order of battle. Both men played down this back-and-forth at the time. Franks has since told his fellow generals that the early sparring with Rumsfeld was about building trust. Once the shooting started, it enabled him to make hundreds of instantaneous calls without having to run each one by Washington.

    Still, as it took shape, Rumsfeld left his marks on the war plan--and then slapped a new coat of paint on the thing when he was done. Rumsfeld's notion was to do more--and do it faster and deadlier--with less. So he mixed in a larger number of special forces than the Army had originally envisioned, giving the commandos a central role. He shortened the soften-'em-up air war to just a few days instead of the more traditional few weeks. But the final surprise belonged to Franks: he opted to begin the ground war before the air war to preserve tactical surprise. Finally, he forced the Army, Navy and Air Force to do something they had more or less avoided for 50 years: fight together instead of carving up the battlefield and reserving each slice for a different service. One contingent of Army troops in western Iraq was even under the command of an Air Force colonel.

    But where Rumsfeld really jerked the Army's chain was in reversing the long-held faith that the U.S. must apply overwhelming power overseas--or none at all. That doctrine, named after Secretary of State Colin Powell, was one of the lessons taken away by the men who fought as young officers in Vietnam. When those lieutenants and captains ripened into colonels and generals, they made the all-or-nothing Army the only kind America would field. By the early 1990s, as the U.S. began to face peskier enemies overseas, the doctrine began to unravel. Discussing how to apply force to Bosnia in 1994, Madeleine Albright, then Bill Clinton's U.N. ambassador, famously asked Powell, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

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