By Patrick Seale
For much of world opinion, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has become a symbol for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq.
Already a hate figure in the Arab and Muslim world - second only perhaps to President George W Bush himself - he has aroused considerable hostility in the United States and in other Western countries, not only in traditional left-wing anti-war circles but among defence policy elites as well.
While the occupation of Iraq with a mere three divisions was widely seen, at the start, as a remarkable confirmation of America's absolute superiority in conventional warfare, the handling of the post-war insurgency is now recognised as a disaster, demonstrating America's failure to adapt to the demands of irregular or 'asymetric' conflict.
In an unusual break with convention, half a dozen retired senior American generals have called openly for Rumsfeld's dismissal. They include such distinguished figures as former NATO commander Wesley Clark and former CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinni. Rumsfeld has been derided as 'incompetent', and his leadership style as 'arrogant'.
As America sinks deeper into the Iraqi quagmire - and as U.S. casualties mount -- other retired officers are expected to follow suit. Polls suggest that two-thirds of Americans have now turned against the war.
The death of 2,360 American soldiers, and perhaps ten times that number maimed in mind or body, is increasingly seen as futile and pointless.
Rumsfeld's mistakes have been well rehearsed in the media. Most often cited was his refusal to commit enough troops to the conflict. When General Eric Shinseki, U.S. army chief of staff, told Congress in February 2003 that 'several hundred thousand' troops would be needed to pacify Iraq, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Pentagon's civilian leadership ridiculed him. Deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz -- one of the most eager advocates of war against Saddam Hussein -- described Shinseki's views as 'wildly off the mark.'
Rumsfeld has also been criticised for insisting that the Pentagon rather than the State Department take charge of the administration of post-war Iraq. This led to fatal errors such as the decision to dissolve the Iraqi army, apparently taken without consulting the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff; the underestimation and misrepresentation of the Iraqi resistance as a bunch of terrorists and 'dead-enders'; and the calamitous high-level decisions which led to the widespread torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, destroying any pretention by America to be a benign power driven by humane or liberal values.
In fairness, it must be said, however, that the charge that the war was an unprovoked act of aggression in gross violation of the UN Charter must be addressed, not to Rumsfeld and his Pentagon colleagues, but to President Bush and his British ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the final analysis, responsibility lies with the political bosses.
In purely military terms, Rumsfeld was a man with a mission. As Secretary of Defence, he became the champion of what he liked to call the 'transformation' of the U.S. armed forces. He understood that, with the end of the Cold War in 1989, the United States was unlikely, in the foreseeable future, to have to fight a major war with an enemy of similar power and reach, like the former Soviet Union.
He argued that instead of the heavy divisions of the past, with their cumbersome logistics, the U.S. needed smaller and lighter forces. Enjoying overwhelming air superiority and able to act with speed and flexibility, they could easily defeat a third world country like Iraq, or any other 'rogue state' that would dare challenge American hegemony. This lesson of the 1991 Gulf war seems to have convinced Rumsfeld that a small force would be sufficient to defeat Saddam Hussein in 2003.
He was right about the first phase of the campaign but terribly wrong about the sequel, when U.S. troops found themselves confronting lethal resistance from a hostile population.
The dilemmas facing the American military in the new era of irregular warfare are analysed by Professor Lawrence Freedman in his latest work, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, a booklet published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
In a neat summary he writes that 'Washington overstated the threat posed by pre-war Iraq and understated the problems of post-war Iraq.'
If I understand him correctly, his criticism is two-fold. First, that Rumsfeld's 'transformation' of the U.S. military did not go far enough. The colossal U.S. defence budget of $500bn - half of the world's military expenditure - is still dominated by 'big ticket' systems of aircraft, warships and armoured vehicles that would only be necessary in the event of a major war against a far more substantial enemy than can currently be identified. Looking around the world, it is indeed hard to find an enemy capable of fighting on America's terms.
In Friendman's vivid phrase, the U.S. 'has prepared itself for a game that only it can play in a league in which it is the sole participant.'
His second criticism follows from the first. Unable to match American military power, its enemies have sought alternative strategies which play to their strengths and to America's weaknesses. Friendman argues that the U.S. has not given enough attention to facing the complex and unpredictable challenges posed by non-state actors, such as Al-Qaida and other global terrorist networks.
Although some progress has been made since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in beefing up Special Forces, developing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance and combat roles, and expanding psychological operations, not nearly enough has been done to prepare to fight the 'asymetric' wars of the future.
The U.S. military establishment, Friedman suggests, became so reluctant to engage in small wars that it failed to prepare for them. 'Throughout the 1990s,' he writes, 'the U.S. military remained wary of irregular wars and refused to make major changes in doctrine and training to accommodate them, insisting that forces optimised for large-scale conventional war would be able to accomplish other, supposedly less demanding, tasks.'
The U.S. army has been trained to shoot, but not how to cope with crowds, or to distribute food, or to maintain contact with local leaders, or indeed how to treat with respect the people of the country it smashed. It seems to have come as a surprise to the Americans that arbitrary arrests, displays of brute force and rude behaviour tended to generate alienation and hostility.
It is now widely recognised that the battle for 'hearts and minds' is of great importance in any counter-insurgency campaign, as is the need to engage with Muslim opinion and avoid public relations disasters such as the images of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
But the question the United States (and its Israeli ally) have not yet addressed, with sufficient self-knowledge, is why otherwise rational men and women are ready to sacrifice their lives in order to inflict pain on them. Suicide bombing, whether in Iraq or Israel, is a strategy not an ideology. It is an instrument used by the weak against the strong. It will no doubt continue to be used until conflicts are resolved on a basis of justice - and none arouses such passions as that between Israel and the Palestinians suffering under its rule.
As the insurgents in Iraq are intermingled with civil society, the war is unlikely to end with a decisive battle. Unless, Friedman seems to hint, it results in a collapse of America's political will, as happened in Vietnam. Lebanon and Somalia. Is it unreasonable for the insurgents to gamble that America's 'will' might break again?
