Frankly, Ed Morrisey raises some very good points about the Rumsfeld resignation. He also points out something that worries me.
However, the timing of this move seems ludicrous. Just two weeks ago, Bush riled up the electorate by pledging unwavering support for Rumsfeld for the next two years. I'm sure that a number of Republican politicians who find themselves out of a job wonder why this decision didn't get made two months ago, and why Bush had to issue that unhelpful statement in the midst of the midterm struggles. Obviously, Bush can live without Rumsfeld, and obviously the White House now understands the drag that Rumsfeld had on the GOP. Otherwise, he wouldn't be out today. Why didn't anyone at the White House figure this out two or three months ago, when the transition to Gates could have demonstrated a little more flexibility on Iraq?
Robert Gates sounds like a fine choice to replace Rumsfeld, at least in terms of experience. I think a skilled politician on the Hill might have been a better choice, perhaps even Bill Frist, who has to know that his presidential ambitions just hit a brick wall in the midterms. (Insiders will not win in 2008.) However, Gates served under Brent Scowcroft and is a member of the new commission headed by Jim Baker to rethink Iraq policy. This looks like a big shift away from democratization and a realignment to something much closer to the foreign policy of Bush 41.
The timing of this was really bad. It really would have been better to have done it earlier rather than on the day after the election. But that isn't what worries me so much, something else does. The choice of Gates, who has been on the commission deciding on a new direction for Iraq sounds an awful lot like putting in a steward for the new policy, doesn't it? That worries me. A lot.
Our influence on events in Iraq needs to begin to diminish. As time goes by, Iraq needs to shoulder more responsibility and with that more of the credit or blame as the case may be for what is going on there. We can not win this for them, the longer their own government is in place, the more responsibility it places on them to fix the problem themselves. So that being the case, our “direction in Iraq” should be to decrease our influence as time passes.
If our influence is decreasing over time, then it really doesn’t matter what Gates does because whatever he does, the more time that passes, the less overall impact it is going to have. In other words, the most important part of the job, the part where we had the most influence, is done and Rumsfeld was the main steward of it. We knocked out Saddam, we finally got the Iraqis to a point where they wrote their own constitution and elected their own government. Since we have been involved there for going on four years, it is difficult for many in this country to keep focused on the fact that the Iraqi government has only been in place for 6 months or so.
Gates might be the right person to preside over the winding down of operations in Iraq just as Rumsfeld might have been the right person to preside over the initial execution of the mission. Overall, I really don’t see much change in direction of our military with Gates at the helm. He isn’t likely to undo the transformation that Rumsfeld started. About the only thing he is likely to bring to the table is a different personality that some might find less chafing. Rumsfeld could be pretty direct when dealing with criticism and I think it rubbed some people the wrong way.
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I found this quote from Woodward’s _State of Denial_ relevant:
In private conversations with Bush, Cheney said Rumsfeld’s departure, no matter how it might be spun, would be seen only as an expression of doubt and hesitation on the war. It would give the war critics great heart and momentum, he confided to an aide, and soon they would be after him and then the president. He virtually insisted that Rumsfeld stay.
I’m guessing Bush has had enough of neoconservative cheerleaders and their policies, and is going to start surrounding himself with people like Gates and Baker (you know, *actual* conservatives) and will begin towing a policy line more like Bush I. Maybe we can get back to defending America and not wasting billions a week on a big government program in a foreign country.