A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Shall he stay or shall he go? Six retired generals have called for a change at the top of the Pentagon command structure, but now, a number of other generals are speaking up on behalf of the Secretary of Defense. Here is the latest, from retired general Michael DeLong:

AS the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I briefed him twice a day; few people had as much interaction with him as I did during those two years. In light of the recent calls for his resignation by several retired generals, I would like to set the record straight on what he was really like to work with.

When I was at Centcom, the people who needed to have access to Secretary Rumsfeld got it, and he carefully listened to our arguments. That is not to say that he is not tough in terms of his convictions (he is) or that he will make it easy on you (he will not). If you approach him unprepared, or if you don't have the full courage of your convictions, he will not give you the time of day.

Mr. Rumsfeld does not give in easily in disagreements, either, and he will always force you to argue your point thoroughly. This can be tough for some people to deal with. I witnessed many heated but professional conversations between my immediate commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, and Mr. Rumsfeld -- but the secretary always deferred to the general on war-fighting issues.

Ultimately, I believe that a tough defense secretary makes commanders tougher in their convictions. Was Donald Rumsfeld a micromanager? Yes. Did he want to be involved in all of the decisions? Yes. But Mr. Rumsfeld never told people in the field what to do. It all went through General Franks.

Mr. Rumsfeld did not like waste, which caused some grumbling among the military leadership even before 9/11. He knew that many of the operational plans we had on the books dated back to the 1990's (some even to the late 80's), and he wanted them updated for an era of a more streamlined, technological force. He asked us all: "Can we do it better, and can we do it with fewer people?"

Sometimes General Franks and I answered yes, other times we answered no. When we said no, there was a discussion; but when we told him what we truly needed, we got it. I never saw him endangering troops by insisting on replacing manpower with technology. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we always got what we, the commanders, thought we needed.

This is why the much-repeated claims that Mr. Rumsfeld didn't "give us enough troops" in Iraq ring hollow. First, such criticisms ignore that the agreed-upon plan was for a lightning operation into Baghdad. In addition, logistically it would have been well nigh impossible to bring many more soldiers through the bottleneck in Kuwait. And doing so would have carried its own risk: you cannot sustain a fighting force of 300,000 or 500,000 men for long, and it would have left us with few reserves, putting our troops at risk in other parts of the world. Given our plan, we thought we had the right number of troops to accomplish our mission.

DeLong goes on to say that there were certainly things the United States could have done better, but that none of those things merit a change at the top.

From Rumsfeld's Rules comes the following bit of advice for people serving the President:

Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles de Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

[. . .]

Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance.

Rumsfeld's critics will no doubt argue that he needs to listen to his own advice. A number of those critics will make that argument in good faith and with the overriding desire to see the reconstruction in Iraq succeed--think Greg Djerejian as a good faith critic. If more people were like Greg, we might be able to argue that Rumsfeld needs to be sacrificed for the greater good of the reconstruction effort and perhaps revitalize that effort with a new Secretary of Defense. After all, if the only bar in the way of having a whole host of good faith critics lend their support and talents to helping make the reconstruction effort work is one man, then utilitarian theory may very well compel that one man to take his hat and leave.

But of course, that is not the situation in which we find ourselves. Rumsfeld's resignation would not be the end of the backbiting. Rather, it would only be a beginning and would be used as a crowbar to pry away any and all remaining consensus opinion behind working for a successful reconstruction effort. This is not a good faith position. Rather, it is defeatism. And in this context, Rumsfeld's removal would only be used as a prelude to defeatism.

What needs to be done, first and foremost is the creation of a consensus behind staying in Iraq until the job is done. In that context, if people want to talk about personnel changes, they can do so. That won't necessarily mean that I will agree with each and every one of those changes. But at least the changes will be discussed with the aim of ensuring a successful reconstruction, rather that simply pulling the plug on our efforts.

Until that happens, however, my view is that any talk of personnel changes can be reasonably viewed as a trap designed to kill off the reconstruction effort. And I am not willing to put the cart before the horse in that fashion.