Rumsfelds' Legacy

"When Rumsfeld leaves office, what will his successor inherit?"

William S. Lind asks the question and then gives us an answer. Wish I could disagree with him.

"A volunteer military without volunteers. The Army missed its active-duty recruiting goal in April by almost half. Guard and Reserve recruiting are collapsing. Retention will do the same as "stop loss" orders are lifted. The reason, obviously, is the war in Iraq. Parents don't want to be the first one on their block to have their kid come home in a box.

"The world's largest pile of wrecked and worn-out military equipment (maybe second-largest if we remember the old Soviet Navy). I'm talking about basic stuff here: trucks, Humvees, personnel carriers, crew-served weapons, etc. This is gear the Rumsfeld Pentagon hates to spend money on, because it does not represent "transformation" to the hi-tech, video-game warfare it wrongly sees as the future. So far, deploying units have made up their deficiencies by robbing units that are not deploying, often National Guard outfits. But that stock has about run out, and some of the stripped units are now facing deployment themselves, minus their gear.

"A military tied down in a strategically meaningless backwater, Iraq, to the point where it can't do much else. A perceptive reader of these columns recently wrote to me that "China has the luxury of the U.S. inflicting grievous wounds, economic and military, on itself from our commitment to spread 'democracy.' Although the Iraqi insurgents may have the limited purpose of ending an occupation, other global actors can sit back and watch us bleed ourselves slowly to, at least, a weakened state. From that point of view, the last thing these other actors wish to see is either a victory or a quick defeat. Instead, events are proceeding nicely as they are." Exactly correct, and those other actors include al-Qaeda.

"Commitments to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of future weapons programs that are militarily as useful as Zeppelins but less fun to watch. If the Army had its Future Combat System, a semi-portable Maginot Line that will cost more than any Navy or Air Force program of equal uselessness, in Iraq or Afghanistan today, would it make any difference? No. Maybe FCS really stands for Funnels Cash System.

"A world wary of U.S. intentions and skeptical of any American claims about anything. In business, good will is considered a tangible asset. In true "wreck it and run" fashion, Rumsfeld & Co. have reduced the value of that asset to near zero. A recent survey of the German public found Russia was considered a better friend than the United States.

"Finally, the equivalent of an unfavorable ruling by a bankruptcy judge in the form of a lost war. We will be lucky if we can get out of Iraq with anything less than a total loss."

But we will win it as soon as the Iraqis get their Army and Police organized and operating. Right?

Take a look at this story from the Dallas Morning News:

"Among the latest: A police commander assassinated [...] early Thursday. Enrique Cardenas Saldaña was gunned down in front of his 9-year-old daughter. He was the sixth police officer - and the fourth commander - killed in the border city this year."

The problem is that this isn't Iraq. The words I removed and replaced by ellipsis [...] were "in Nuevo Laredo." That's Mexico.

When there are social groups with a strong objection to the existing society and governmental structure and no hesitation to use violent to get their way, it is extremely difficult to get the violence under control.

OK. The comparison is a long way from exact. But Mexico is a long-term nation that has existed in relative peace for many years. Iraq is remenent of an Imperialistic decision to cobble together three conflicting administrative units from the collapsed Ottoman Empire, creating a nation that has been under a really nasty dictatorship for the last three decades or more and has spent the last twenty-five years at war and are now occupied by a foriegn invader. If Mexico is having trouble surpressing terroristic violence, how much more difficult will it be for Iraq?

That means we can't leave for a long time without leaving behind chaos. But our military forces are such that we can't stay that long, either.

Rumsfelds' legacy. Any Bushs'. Bush doesn't like to admit defeat, but he can't win in Iraq.

So what he will do is evacuate the troops from Iraq, ignore the problems he leaves behind, and blame the liberals and Democrats for the defeat he is admitting because they wouldn't let him win.

That's my prediction.