A good column on Nordlinger's trip with Rummy. Be warned! It is favorable.
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Traveling with the SecDef; cheers for Fiji; the chairman of the board; and more
Jay Nordlinger - National Review
Friends, the week before last, I did a little traveling with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (and his wife, Joyce). They were flying from the NATO conference in Colorado Springs to a speech at the Reagan Library, in southern California. I'm going to have a piece on this trip, and these conversations — I spoke with Mrs. Rumsfeld, too — in the next NR. In the forthcoming NR (available through NR Digital as early as tomorrow).
Here, however, let me give you a little taste, and also a little bit extra. I chatted with Rumsfeld about a range of subjects, including the press. The press is always commenting on you, I said (essentially); would you like a chance to comment on the press?
He said, first, that he finds the press a little lazy and gullible — a little too unwilling to check things out, a little too ready to swallow assertions whole. He said, "Washington has changed so much since I first [arrived]. Today it seems so organized around talking points." On a Sunday-morning talk show, you might hear a guy say the same thing "five, ten times in 28 minutes." And "you get the feeling, 'Fair enough: Either he believes what he's saying, or it's a talking point.'" And the talking point may be true: but doesn't the press have a responsibility to find out?
Rumsfeld cited some specific failures in the press — some failures to check things out, rather than buy a line: 1) "Go it alone." The idea that, in Iraq, the United States was "going it alone." Said Rumsfeld, "The president put together a coalition of 90 nations," and "that's not going it alone!" To be sure, some of the countries were small, but maybe, said Rumsfeld, they were committing a high percentage of their troops, and maybe it took "political courage" and "personal courage" to do so.
2) "We need more troops." It's interesting, said the SecDef, that "every military commander who reports to [Gen. John] Abizaid says we don't [need more troops] and [that] they don't want them because it would cause more force protection." He added, "I would be happy to put in more troops, if anyone told me they'd be helpful."
3) "No plan." Many people charge that the U.S. had "no plan" for after-Saddam. But then, insisted Rumsfeld, how could we have done all we've done, in so short a time, with no plans? Why doesn't someone — other than the Wall Street Journal — go out and investigate whether the "no plan" claim, constantly asserted and parroted and accepted, is true?
And finally, 4) our old friend "imminence." Rumsfeld said, first, that no one he knows ever claimed an "imminent threat" — because the point of removing Saddam was to do so before he had reached the point of imminence, thus making it too late — and, second, this: "When was 9/11 'imminent'? Was it imminent an hour before it happened? Was it imminent a week before, a month before, a year before?"
Also, let me tell you about SDI — or rather, about Rumsfeld and SDI. This is a subject that has rather dropped off the map, with a war on terror to wage. But it hasn't dropped off Rumsfeld's map, or the administration's.
Rumsfeld said, first, that the Pentagon stopped saying "national missile defense" in favor of just plain "missile defense." Why? "Because, if you think about it, what's 'national' depends on who you are and where you're living." The government has to consider our forces overseas. And "do we think it's important for our allies and trading partners around the world not to be vulnerable, not to be threatened or intimidated or blackmailed by missile threats? Sure."
There was a time, continued Rumsfeld, when people thought "we were going to put a shield over our country and that that meant we were saying to everyone else, 'You're on your own.'" But no.
With the U.S. free of the ABM Treaty — thanks to President Bush's withdrawal from it — serious missile defense is steaming ahead, and something rudimentary should be deployed next year. It has long been Rumsfeld's desire to "get people thinking substantively instead of emotionally" about the issue. Missile defense should not be the object of "theological wars," but rather of practical, hard-headed thinking.
Rumsfeld was pretty much crackling at the Reagan Library — in his prepared remarks and, even more, in a Q&A with audience members. He was introduced by Fred Ryan, chairman of the Reagan Library board. It was about 12:05 and Ryan said, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, or maybe it's afternoon. Then again, here at the Reagan Library, it's always morning in America." Ha, ha — but nice. Ryan also said, concluding his introduction, Americans are very fortunate to have this man as secretary of defense; and America's enemies are very unfortunate" — also very nice.
You can read the speech and a transcript of the Q&A on the Defense Department's website: go here. But I'd like to highlight just a little of what Rumsfeld said. In those prepared remarks — talking about the 40th president, our man, the Gipper, whom he referred to as "our great president" — he said,
"Someone asked me, 'What's the most distinctive thing about President Reagan?' And I said that his leadership was directional. He had a way of getting people's eyes up off their shoelaces and out to the horizon. And you almost could feel him planting a flag, a standard, miles down the road, so that people could see it and track towards it. He did it with words. He did it with actions. But he did it brilliantly. And it was that leadership that elevated all of us and helped change the world."
And here's a little bit about the "new NATO," and America's coalition in Iraq (and yes, contrary to what you may have heard — and may be hearing incessantly, every day — there is a coalition):
"I arrived this morning from Colorado Springs, where the United States hosted a meeting of the NATO defense ministers. At that meeting of the 19 NATO nations were three former Warsaw Pact adversaries: Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, now NATO allies. Also present, interestingly, were seven former East Bloc nations: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia, nations that have been invited to join NATO and will become part of that alliance in the early part of next year. The membership of those recently-free nations is changing the alliance. It is injecting a new energy into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a new love of freedom which can really . . . only come from nations that so recently were enslaved. That's the world that Ronald Reagan left us."
Rumsfeld told me, by the way, that when he made that famous remark about "Old Europe" and "New Europe," he was really thinking of NATO — the old, established NATO (to which he had been ambassador, in the early 1970s), and the new, augmented NATO.
Continued Rumsfeld, at the Reagan Library,
"Or take the coalition in Iraq. It now includes military forces from 32 nations. Consider some of the countries that are contributing troops in Iraq today: Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. They all have forces in Iraq assisting the coalition. There are others, as well, but I just mention these because those are the nations helping in Iraq today that President Reagan helped to make free."
And, "Why are so many of these nations, many small, most not very wealthy, sending their forces . . . halfway around the world, to help bring freedom to the Iraqi people? I suspect it's because so many of them have just recovered their own freedom, and they're eager, they're proud to help the Iraqi people recover theirs. God bless them all, and God bless Ronald Reagan for what he did to help liberate them."
We've talked before, in this column, about a gulf between typical reporting on Iraq — and typical commentary on Iraq — and the "facts on the ground" (that is, the complete facts, not just those that appear to make the entire situation appear to be "chaos," to use Mrs. Albright's word).
In that Q&A with the audience, Rumsfeld related, "I was testifying two weeks ago before a House appropriations committee. And that morning, 17 members of the United States House of Representatives had just come back from Iraq, and they were Republicans and Democrats alike, and six or seven were on that committee that I was testifying before. And in the course of the hearing, they went right down the line explaining what they saw in Iraq and how it was so markedly different, and stunningly different, from what they had as an impression, a collective impression, from all of the inputs they'd received from the press — the U.S. press, international press, intelligence reports, and the media. And they were stunned by how different what they saw was, and what a wonderful job the young men and women in uniform are doing for this country. And in that hearing, with the press there in full flower, they went right down the line and said that. The next day, there was no mention of the hearing, let alone what they'd said."
A word about weapons of mass destruction? There's something funny at the end (stay tuned): "The work that's being done by Dr. David Kay and his team of people, some 1,200-, 1,300-strong now, is — it's important work. They're proceeding in a very professional and orderly way. It's an enormous country. Think about it. They buried jet airplanes under the ground. I suppose that was — last war, they sent them to Iran and never got them back. So I suppose it shouldn't come as a great surprise. But if you can bury big jet airplanes underground — and no one knew they were there. No one could find them. It happened that the sand blew away and all of a sudden a tail stuck up.
"But in a country that size, it is going to take time. There's just no question about it. And the way to find it is not by running around like that French inspector with his magnifying glass and checking everything. The . . ."
At this point, the audience tittered, thinking, possibly, that Rumsfeld was talking about the French government, or some sort of U.N. team. Sensing this (possible) misunderstanding, Rumsfeld said, "No, I didn't mean that! I was . . . full stop! I was talking about Inspector Couseau or whatever. [The secretary meant "Clouseau."] I really was!"
Later on, Rumsfeld said to some of us, "Who was that guy? Cousteau?" No, Cousteau was the marine-biologist superstar; Clouseau was the Peter Sellers character (Pink Panther); Couseau was no one.
Last, please note something about defense — about a defense against terrorism, which really doesn't exist, unless it is offense: unless it is getting them before they get you (to put it crudely but accurately and necessarily).
"When President Reagan asked me to be a Middle East envoy, right after the 241 Marines were killed in Beirut, Lebanon, I went over there, and George Shultz was the secretary of state, and he sent me over there. The truck went into that Marine barracks and killed 241 Americans. The next week, month, and year these barricades were put all around buildings — these little concrete things. You've seen them; [pointing with his neck, outside the windows] there are some out here [Rumsfeld said this with just the slightest bit of contempt: as those barriers — Jersey barriers, they're called — can't do terribly much]. So then they [the terrorists] started lobbing rocket-propelled grenades over them. So the next thing, you go down to the Corniche in Beirut, and here was this building, the British Embassy, with a metal mesh all the way around it so it drove off these rocket-propelled grenades; when they'd hit the mesh, it would bounce off. So what did the terrorists do? They go to school on you. They started hitting people going to and from work.
"So, you can't — I do not believe — I'm convinced President Bush is right. I am convinced that the way to deal with this terrorist problem is to go after them where they are and not think that we can simply hunker down here and defend against every one of those attacks."
The truth of this seems to me obvious, and it would be nice if more people, in this country and around the world, saw the obviousness of it.
A final word (for now) about Rumsfeld. I observed him for about a day, and I know that he is prone to an outburst or two, but he was extraordinarily happy — a wholly happy man. A content man. Even a merry man. A life-lover. And why not? He's been a superstar since practically the day he was born. Most popular kid in school, star wrestler, hot-shot naval aviator, blah, blah, blah. Wonderful wife, wonderful marriage, by all accounts — a famous marriage, in political circles. Great kids, great grandkids. Succeeded in everything he ever did. Elected to Congress at 30. Million important posts thereafter. Youngest SecDef in history (under Ford). Big captain of industry (Searle). Scads of friends. Health, looks — not a shadow, as far as I can tell.
And I think this very happiness and security increases a person's ability — accentuates his talent and facilitates his deeds. Happiness is a kind of oil, helping everything in life run more smoothly. Suffering and hardship, in my view, are overrated. They may sap ability, rather than enhance it. They may weaken — wear down — instead of strengthen.
Anyway, that's the end of my armchair and unqualified psychologizing, and I'll leave the rest for you.
I noticed an item in The Hotline — a Washington-distributed political round-up — that reminded me of something Rumsfeld had said to me. You know the bit about the Iraq coalition, and the number of those nations, and the fact that some of them are pretty small?
Al Gore and Bob Dole were doing a joint appearance in San Diego, before a bunch of mortgage bankers. Mocking the coalition, Gore said, "Fiji sent one person." Dole quipped, in response, "Well, they've only got three!"
That was sort of Rumsfeld's point, wasn't it? That some of our allies — small though they may be — are committing a high percentage of their troops, and that that's a sacrifice that should be applauded, not sneered at?
Many of you will recall when Robert Scheer, the leftist journalist, referred to our allies as "nations you can buy on eBay." Mark Shields, for his part, on CNN, did a riff about Albania — what a joke it was that they were on board. This last had a particular effect on me, because I had recently come from Albania, and been moved by those people, some of whom had served brutal prison sentences. They knew a thing or two about freedom, and liberation, and new chances, and gratitude.
I have an Albanian flag "flying" in my office — I'm looking at it now. A journalist/intellectual in Tirana said to me, "Our neighbors, despising our steadfast support of the United States, call us 'the Israel of the Balkans.'" I told them — the audience gathered — that (to use a cliché) they should wear that label as a badge of honor.
Just a touch of mail, and then out. A lady writes: "Jay, I have to tell you something about feminist language. Maybe it's just the entrepreneurial right-wing radical in me, but if I'm chairman of the board, I want to be the CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD. Do not, under any circumstances, call me a 'chairperson' — it completely demeans the accomplishment and highlights exactly that which I want disregarded. I don't want emphasis on my gender; I want emphasis on my ability."
So very well said — Madam Chairman.
Last, you may recall hearing from the teacher who said that, delightfully, one of his students had written that the new governor of California had been suspected of being "anti-semantic."
Well, another reader writes, "I had a co-worker (originally from West Virginia) say that Arnold was 'a social liberal and a physical conservative.' I think that's about right."
Indeed, it is right, but we will have no disparagement of West, by God, Virginia around these parts!
Bye, y'ounse.
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