GregsOpinion.com

One of the formative points in my political upbringing was the 1984 campaign when Gary Hart asked Walter Mondale to identify one single issue where he disagreed with big labor. Mondale couldn't think of anything and went on a notable discourse about how proud he was of this. It doomed Mondale as a tool of special interests. Ever since, I've had a soft spot in my heart for ... well ... Hart.

So it is that I, a Democrat and pretty faithful follower of the DLC/PPI philosophy coined as the "Third Way," reach a point where I can safely say I disagree with both the majority in may party and also the position expressed by NuDonk's Ed Kilgore when they both seem down on Sec. Defense Don Rumsfeld. That this puts me at odds with the wing of the GOP that I tend to speak most favorably of, the McCain-Hagel Caucus makes this point a pretty substantive one, no doubt.

Don Rumseld should stay, not because of some cynical hope that he'll continue on in failure, but that he's the best hope for success in the administration.

David Ignatius comes closest to summing up my view on the matter:

Rumsfeld's situation recalls that of an earlier defense secretary -- Robert S. McNamara -- who struggled with a war that proved far more complicated and painful than expected. The two men share several traits that are at once strengths and weaknesses: a brilliant, intimidating intellect that comes across to many people as arrogance; a skepticism about the Pentagon's encrusted layers of power and past practice, which angers the military brass; a reluctance to play the usual Pentagon game of log-rolling and mutual back-scratching on Capitol Hill, which leaves few political defenders; and, most of all, a bold gambler's decision to go to war without fully understanding the complexities of the battlefield.

McNamara is hated by a generation of military officers who blame him for plunging the Army into a failed ground war; it's too early to know whether Rumsfeld's war will turn out as badly as Vietnam did, or whether he'll have the permanent enmity of the military, but he's certainly on his way. Similarly, McNamara and Rummy have a knack for attracting congressional criticism within their own party. Last week's parade of Republican senators calling for Rumsfeld's resignation -- John McCain, Chuck Hagel, Susan Collins, Trent Lott -- was reminiscent of the pressure from conservative Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee who were lobbying LBJ to dump McNamara in 1967.

I've always thought the demonization of McNamara was unfair, or at least misapplied. McNamara's efforts to modernize the military, like Rumsfeld's, were on target. Claims that he prevented the military from winning the Vietnam War are mostly myth; in truth, the military never presented McNamara with a coherent strategy for victory against an elusive guerrilla enemy, as Gen. Bruce Palmer acknowledged in his superb history of the war.

Many of the recent attacks on Rumsfeld similarly miss the point. He is faulted for not having enough troops in Iraq, for example. Perhaps that was true during and immediately after the war, but it isn't now. The role of the additional troops we're sending today is mainly to protect the other U.S. troops there. More American soldiers mean more targets, not more security for Iraqis. Additional soldiers definitely are needed, but they should be Iraqis. The troop debate is partly a rear-action battle against Rumseld's ideas about military "transformation." Advocates of the old, heavyweight Army have never forgiven Rummy for advocating lighter, more mobile forces, but Rumsfeld was correct.

Like McNamara, Rumsfeld has failed to communicate effectively with a war-traumatized nation. There were many things he could have said when questioned in Kuwait about the slow pace of armoring Humvees, because the Pentagon has been working hard in recent months to fix this problem. But in seeming to dismiss an enlisted man's criticism, Rumsfeld came across as saying, in McNamara fashion: You're not smart enough to understand, soldier. Like it, or lump it.

Rumsfeld gets many of the little things right, but he has gotten the big thing wrong. Like McNamara, he realized that the war he had advocated was turning into a "long, hard slog." And like McNamara, he was unable to find a way to alter strategy in the midst of that conflict. Like McNamara, he will probably become a political casualty of the war he helped set in motion.

Rummy isn't perfect by any means. Nor is he fully applauded by me. Many of the mistakes made earlier have led to the current degree of difficulty we now face. But Rumsfeld has proven himself flexible enough to warrant a benefit of doubt on my part, even though he still goes wanting for style points. I think Iraq was the wrong laboratory of expermintation with the smaller military mindset, but that reform has been long overdue (ironically, it's also one that Hart himself had advocated back in the early 80s). And the need to excavate the reformists in the military likewise trumps the fact that I agree with my side in that some of the early firings of officers have been unwarranted. That Rumsfeld hasn't proven flexible enough in my mind doesn't outweigh the fact that he's been flexible enough to adapt to the conditions his earlier problems have reinforced in Iraq. He hasn't invited enough debate over the tactics used to win the battle there, but he's invited more than I foresee of most other likely replacements. So it is that my own fledgling little support of Rumsfeld isn't that he's the Secretary of Defense I might want, but he's the best we have for now under this adminstration and that likely won't change if he is at the end of his nine lives.

ADD-ON: Apparently, I can't make this a perfect split ... Marshall Wittman at Bull Moose is calling for Rummy's retention, too. Damn. Now I feel sorta like a copycat. Although, the Moose's reasons are a bit more cynical. Good enough for now.