Boy, am I going to miss Rummy -- and not just because his post-election exit looks like a square-jawed head on a platter served up to the incoming Democratic leadership on the Hill by the president. If the president thinks Donald Rumsfeld is a sacrifice tasty enough to satisfy ravenous Democrats, he is dead wrong. "Let them eat Rumsfeld" isn't going to stop the Democratic power grab in progress. As incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it on hearing the Rumsfeld news: "I welcome the long overdue change in leadership at the Pentagon -- now we need a change in policy."
And as I have argued before, we do need a change. But we need to make changes in order to accomplish the civilization-saving mission of neutralizing jihad in the Middle East and Islamization everywhere else, not to placate Democrats jabbering about (to quote Pelosi's Rumsfeld statement again) a "change in policy," a "fresh start," "a better way forward," a "new direction" without offering a plan.
Certainly, there's been intense dissent over Rumsfeld's belief in the efficacy of a smaller, more maneuverable, more high-tech army. Indeed, his policy has frustrated many military minds who have seen a dire need in Iraq for additional "boots on the ground." As an admittedly non-military mind, I don't believe more troops alone would have changed Iraq for the better. After all, common sense tells us we haven't unleashed the ones we already have there. Otherwise, Fallujah, for example, would no longer exist. For my money, the day we "lost" Iraq -- or lost control of Iraq by showing we didn't really mean business -- was back in 2003 when top man L. Paul Bremer wanted the military to shoot some of the looters who were ripping Baghdad, and U.S. military commanders put the kibosh on the tactic for being too severe. Not exactly Patton-esque.
I suppose Donald Rumsfeld is ultimately responsible for that, too -- the kind of policy that indicates 21st-century America simply may be too sensitive to actually win wars. But this a generational flaw, and not why Rumsfeld is leaving. I've always liked the steely, jaunty face Rummy presented to the world -- a face for jihadists to fear. There is the inimitable way he has taken on his media inquisitors, turning Gotcha Journalism back on its own. There was his unforgettable dig about "Old Europe" that once upon a time sent France and Germany into cardi-plomatic arrest. There is his almost sub-rosa understanding of the moral bankruptcy of the misnamed Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," signaled by a deft discussion of "the so-called occupied territories." Maybe most important, however, is that I can actually imagine Rumsfeld counseling the president to push the button, or whatever it is presidents must do, to eliminate Iran or other foes who threaten our