YESTERDAY, THE WORLD LEARNED that Donald Rumsfeld, America’s 13th and 21st Secretary of Defense under Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, did from multiple mylenomia at age 88. His loving family was reportedly by his side. His death was said to be peaceful. Comfortable. Any number of dead troops from the Iraq War cannot claim the same.
Rumsfeld, or “Rummey,” as he was affectionately known by NeoCons, was probably most known for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush II. He is also the man who initially recruited a staffer, Dick Cheney, who was for many Americans, their first introduction to neoconservatism when he ran as Bush II’s Vice President. Before the Iraq War, Rummey infamously claimed that Iraq had so-called “weapons of mass destruction,” although no stockpile was ever discovered. This W.M.D. story was repeated by others under Bush II, leading to a good pretext to waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the aftermath of which we still experience to this day. American troops remain in both nations as peacekeepers.
Rummie was also known for use of torture against enemies under Bush II, including the Abu Ghraib scandal. Eventually, it lead to Rumsfeld’s resignation in late 2006, where he was seceded by Robert Gates. He spent most of his life involved in politics, but had a good network of private people from many entities in between. He was a C.E.O. or chairman of any of a number of companies in between political gigs. He served in the Navy as a young man only briefly.
In fairness, 9/11 didn’t bring out the best in anyone. The attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001 caused tremendous loss of life and more of an unthinkable degree. That Americans and her leaders would want revenge was only human. The problem was finding the enemy. It wasn’t as if the enemy, al-Qaeda, was another recognized nation. But not finding the real enemy meant we guessed and we generally guessed wrong. In the land of the unaccountable lurking dangerously inside the beltway meant this horrible situation could never really be understood or adequately addressed. The “shock and awe” campaign that followed that fateful day is unquestionably Rummey’s baby, even if he himself didn’t deliver the bombs. A great deal has been written about this period in history and the analyses are mostly worthy of thought, if not hindsight. It was certainly a different world. Now Rummey’s passed to yet another world — where hopefully there is no torture.
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