But even in Woodward's book there is a sense of grudging admiration for the passionate though mercurial Rumsfeld, though it was paired with an almost palpable despair at his inability to understand the limits of experimentation and flexibility in an organization as vast as the Pentagon. His Nov. 6 memo is another example of a relentlessness that did dismay many of the senior commanders — how to investigate 15 options when the war was itself changing daily?
To which a Rumsfeld supporter might ask: How not to investigate every conceivable option when victory is in the balance?
Rumsfeld brought a superhuman energy to the job. Was it too much to ask to expect the military to develop means of responding to that energy?
The answer may very well be yes, but it might be a very definite "no."
This Nov. 6 memo could very well have been leaked by a Rumsfeld partisan, a last marker of a six-year tenure that demanded of the world's greatest military even more, and against which future Iraqi policy will be measured.
Like the president's speeches, there is not a hint of resignation to defeat in Rumsfeld's musings, but only a sounding-out of various approaches. If anything, the memo is a clear denunciation of the "below-the-line" options, including a static approach of "[c]ontinu[ing] on the current path," a huge push on Baghdad, partition, and the backhanded dismissal of a "Dayton-like process." Rumsfeld knew what he didn't see working, and he spelled it out.
My main criticism of Secretary Rumsfeld is the same one I have of President Bush and Vice President Cheney: They do not spend enough time talking to the American people through extended conversations with serious questioners, not the press gaggles in the White House press room that seek a minute of fame, but folks like Brit Hume, with whom the president did sit down on Monday for an extended conversation. Secretary Rumsfeld was indeed busy fighting a war and working the world and the Pentagon, the former on the need for realism and the latter on the need for transformation.
But he was a master of the conversation with the public, and he ought to have continued it at every turn. Before many weeks pass, the Pentagon press, then the American people, and finally large portions of the American military will miss his approach though the hours will indeed be better for the first two groups.
I hope some network has the good sense to offer Secretary Rumsfeld a lengthy exit interview, preferably live, without commercial interruption. Rumsfeld Unplugged — there's an HBO event I'd pay the price to watch.