Robert McNamara Rumsfeld

Hardly a day goes by without some new retired general calling for Rumsfeld to resign. The problem with all these calls, though, is that they all relate to ancient history: Rumsfeld's actions and decisions in the run up to and early prosecution of the war. The complaints are all the same: we didn't put enough men on the ground, they didn't have adequate armor or resources, we didn't have an adequate plan for the peace, and (by the way) Rumsfeld is an arrogant prick who didn't listen to his uniformed advisors. While the charge of arrogance is probably not one that even Rumsfeld would deny, the complaints that he "didn't listen" have a sort of whining, sour-grapes, Monday-morning-quaterbacking aspect to them that both is unappealing and gives ground for skepticism. After all, none of these men resigned until well after the decisions at issue were made. If they really felt that strongly at the time, why didn't they resign then and there?

The rest of the complaints are clearly true, but in a sense irrelevant: it's too late to do anything about any of that now. What you don't hear, or at least what I have not heard, is any strong critique of what Rumsfeld is doing now. And that, it seems to me, is the only really legitimate basis for calling for him to resign today.

Hey, look. I have no love for Rumsfeld and there is no question he deserves a large part (but not all) of the blame for the mess we have created. (Bush actually deserves most of it, remember, since without Bush's support or at least concurrence, Rumsfeld could do nothing. See this for what might have been). For both of these reasons I would like to see Rumsfeld -- indeed the entire "cabal" -- punished in some way. And I would particularly like to see Rumsfeld humiliated precisely because he is such an arrogant prick.

But vengeance is a poor reason for doing anything, much less replacing the Secretary of Defense in the middle of a war. If we are going to demand his resignation, it ought to be for what he is doing NOW, not for what he did in the past or for what kind of person he is. And, on this score, none of the retiring generals seems to have much to say.

What I, and maybe most people, would like most of all is to see Rumsfeld (and Bush) say "I'm sorry. We screwed up." That's not going to happen any time soon, if ever, and it certainly won't happen as long as Bush is in office. But I have to believe that, for all his bluster, even Rumsfeld realizes that the calculations that underlay the administration's Iraq strategy in the run up to and early months of the war were incredibly naive and arrogant, and I also believe that Rumsfeld is likely to carry a sense of responsibility, maybe even guilt, regarding those decisions to his grave.

Rumsfeld is this generation's Robert McNamara. Like McNamara, I suspect that, if he lives long enough, he will one day write his own In Retrospect : The Tragedy and Lessons of [Iraq]. And, like McNamara, he will end up being vilified by all: by the opponents of the war because he made it happen and by the supporters of the war because he eventually "sold out."

Perhaps that is punishment enough.