Rumsfeld Rumsfeld

As the election comes upon us, there are, again, repeated, insistant calls for Donald Rumsfeld to resign as Secretary of Defense. Of course, that isn't going to happen, and it is a cheap way of attacking the Administration's policies in Iraq. But one thing that is, I think, intentionally glossed over by the MSM about his job is that it is not limited to fighting the war, but also includes a massive reformation of our military to fight in the 21st Century. The following comes from an email sent by Frank "Varifrank" Martin to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com:

Anyone who thinks Rumsfeld is doing an awful job doesn't understand his job or his mission from the President. Rumsfeld [doesn't] just hold a position in the cabinet, his mission from the President was to literally transform the Military. In terms of organizational culture, there is no culture in the world more institutionally resistant to change than the Military. Add to that, the difficulty of cutting or changing the various lines of revenue to industry that are naturally going to be impacted by that change, and you get a wicked combination of people who are very unhappy at the start that you've appeared on the scene.

Rumsfeld is not a nice guy and he has no ambitions beyond this job. He's not looking at this job as a way to trade up for Presidency someday. That makes it difficult for anyone to "influence" his decisions, which means they go to "plan B" by attacking him at every turn in an attempt to make his job harder, in hopes that he will ask them to knock it off, and give them some form of favor in return. He of course, doesn't give a damn, which in their minds is what makes him the 'most dangerous man' in Washington.

The Military needs transformation, everyone agrees on that, not because the people in it are bad, or that the men and women in it are bad, but its an organization built for a job that's changed tremendously with world events. It hasn't changed, and it wont, without someone forcing that sort of institutional transformation. Its a hard job and its rarely successful.

The Military cannot change itself, no organization can do that. Imagine your company or organization suddenly saying that it needs to change to meet business challenges because that's what the CEO read in a magazine over the weekend. How's that work? You spend months on "Mission statements" and going on useless employee retreats and in the end, the same lame-o fatass managers run the same asininely redundant departments only with different titles and cost centers. How do you get a company to change? You don't change because you want to, you change because the competition forces you to change. You get creamed in a quarterly result, or you get merged with the competition. So what happens to us if our Military gets creamed in combat or "Merged"? In that respect, Rumsfelds transformation doest seem so bad now does it?

The Military cannot change itself. Air Force screams at the Navy, Navy screams at the Army, and everyone screams at the Marines, and the Coast Guard continues to go on unfunded. Congress just sits squirms in its seat every time someone wants to do something simple like close an air force base, Private Industry? Oh sure that will work out fine, no self interest there, right?

So what do you do? You get a man just exactly like Rumsfeld, who's been around forever, knows exactly what works and what doesn't work, knows where all the bodies are buried at every level of the chain of command and you let him loose by putting him at the top.

Rumsfeld is uniquely and highly qualified to do exactly what he is doing. He is an institutional nightmare to the lifetime bureaucrat. Think of Rumsfeld as one of those CEO's that gets hired to turn around a company in bankruptcy court, or like Tom Peters without the PR team. This is not to say that the Military is "bankrupt", but it has lost its way in some places. Do we really need a dozen more Seawolf submarines or should we have 50 more C-17s and C-5s? F-22's or MV-22's?, Airborne Laser Missile Defense or another 10 brigades of Marines and Special Forces? I don't know the answer to those questions, but I know better than to ask Admiral Chuck "Seawolf" Hardmore if we need more Seawolf submarines.

That's why we are lucky to have him, and that's why everyone hates him, because in the end Rumsfeld will be remembered as the greatest change agent of all time.

I think that Donald Rumsfeld is the best Secretary of Defense we have had since that post was created, and I agree with Frank Martin that history will agree with that assessment.