Wrestling With History

No student of history should have been surprised by the insurgency. For centuries, guerrilla tactics have been the preferred strategy of the outgunned and outsoldiered, because insurgency offers a way of winning a war without having to conquer a superior army. Like mosquitoes ruining a picnic, insurgents patiently sap the superior army's will to hold a city, province or country. Kalev Sepp, a retired Special Operations officer and adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq, published an influential essay last spring in Military Review, an official Army publication, in which he identified more than 50 insurgencies around the world during the past century, ranging from the second Boer War in South Africa to the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines to the ongoing Russian campaign in Chechnya. Other writers have traced the history of insurgency to the Roman Empire.

After much wheel-spinning, lessons drawn from those examples are finally shaping the U.S. approach in Iraq. "We've crafted a strategy for success in Iraq based on historical lessons [and] counterinsurgency principles," Iraq commander Gen. George Casey recently testified before Congress. This strategy, Casey said, calls for an effort more political than military, precisely the sort of "nation-building" once scorned by Rumsfeld and Bush. The goal is to "enable the Iraqis to take charge of their future." Ordinary Iraqis won't fully turn against the insurgents until they can rely on a competent government to meet basic human needs -- for safety, economic opportunity, reliable infrastructure and so on.

Counterinsurgency is a matter of turning on the air conditioning and keeping it on. Of guaranteeing Iraqis that they can take a government job without fear that their children will be kidnapped as punishment. It is a question not just of sweeping the insurgents from Samarra or Fallujah or Ramadi, but of keeping such cities safe for the long run. The average counterinsurgency effort lasts nine years, Casey informed Congress, "and there's no reason that we should believe that the insurgency in Iraq will take any less time to deal with."

McCaffrey concluded after his visit that the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have indeed landed on the right strategy and are finally making progress. Credit, he said, belongs to the "superb" senior generals who took over after the chaotic first months, and to the soldiers and Marines comprising "the most competent and battle-wise force in our nation's history." His silence concerning civilian leadership of the Pentagon spoke volumes.

Rumsfeld's support continues to dwindle. He has alienated a fair percentage of America's officer corps, though few of them will say so on the record. The boss pays meticulous attention to the selection and promotion of new generals, "constantly scanning the bench: who's coming up," says his assistant, DiRita. Focusing on personnel is a way of putting his lasting stamp on military culture, Rumsfeld believes. It also has the effect of reminding officers that he is watching them carefully.

Nevertheless, the brass has ways of making itself heard. Opinions are expressed to trusted friends, retired comrades, veteran reporters. The tone of that feedback has become so negative that even some pro-Rumsfeld analysts now doubt his effectiveness. Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Reagan-era Pentagon official, is a good example: In his Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column, Kelly recently called for Rumsfeld to resign, even though in many ways he "has been a terrific secretary of defense . . . Army officers think Rumsfeld has it in for them," Kelly wrote. "I don't think that is true. But when a perception is as widespread as this one is, it becomes a reality."

Another well-connected conservative, Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, once regarded Rumsfeld as "the most persuasive proponent of the Bush Administration's muscular approach to global security." Now: "From the disarray of 9/11 to the decay of the Western alliance to the debacle of the Iraq occupation to the disorg-anized oversight of Pentagon procurement, Rumsfeld has served the president badly."

Then there's Congress. The secretary has always had a prickly relationship with Congress, which he and most defense analysts regard as too protective of obsolete military bases and big-ticket weapons. When Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon in 2001 after 24 years away, he was shocked to see the extent of congressional nitpicking and micromanaging. "The number of congressional staffers [devoted to Pentagon issues] had doubled from something like 8,000 to . . . something like 16,000," he marveled. Those staffers demand hundreds of annual reports on a stupefying array of topics, he complained, many of marginal value. "There's so many hands on the steering wheel."

Rumsfeld did a bad job of masking his feelings. As his friend of more than 40 years, Nixon-era defense secretary Melvin Laird, complained recently in Foreign Affairs magazine, Rumsfeld's "overconfident and self-assured style on every issue . . . did not play well with Congress." He warned that this "sour relationship on Capitol Hill could doom the whole [Iraq] effort."

Lately, though, the Republican-controlled Congress has gone past pestering to near repudiation of the secretary. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, recently returned from Iraq dismayed by the sorry state of the country's infrastructure, 2 1/2 years and an ocean of money after the U.S. arrival. He concluded that "the secretary of defense . . . was not, in my judgment, showing the strength and decisiveness that is needed at this time."

As a further rebuke, Warner joined most of the Senate Republicans and all of the Democrats in approving an amendment, 90-to-9, that would require clear rules for the treatment of enemy prisoners under Rumsfeld's jurisdiction.

This scolding of the administration was sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- which only underlined how irritated many senators have become. A high-profile bill that might advance the fortunes of McCain? There are few things conservative Republicans dislike more.