THE WAR THAT MATTERS

Pentagon Reform Is His Battle Cry: Donald H. Rumsfeld, with new political clout won in Iraq and Afghanistan, intensifies his war on the military establishment. (Doyle McManus, August 17, 2003, LA Times)

Donald H. Rumsfeld has won two wars and won them his way, overruling military traditionalists. But to the secretary of Defense, Afghanistan and Iraq were merely two battles in a larger crusade.

Even as he directs military operations around the world, Rumsfeld has seized a leading role in the national security debate in Washington, giving the Pentagon new clout in administration debates on foreign policy and intelligence.

He has set out to "transform" the military establishment. He wants everything to move more quickly, whether it's getting Marines to trouble spots or designing and delivering new weapons systems.

Pentagon officials would write fewer reports to Congress, get raises based on performance rather than seniority, and buy weapons and supplies at the best value for the dollar. And overseas troops would shift from Cold War garrisons in Europe to terrorism hot spots like East Asia and the Middle East.

All that at the age of 71, on the final lap of a long political career.

If Rumsfeld succeeds on all those fronts, he may enter the history books as one of the most powerful secretaries of Defense since the office was created -- as powerful as Robert S. McNamara, who remade the Pentagon in the 1960s. [...]

Rumsfeld is pugnacious, demanding, brusque and, to his rivals, infuriating. That, admirers say, is what makes him effective.

Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger collided with Rumsfeld almost 30 years ago, when Rumsfeld was on his first tour as Defense secretary under President Ford. Kissinger described the young Rumsfeld in his memoirs as "a special Washington phenomenon: the skilled full-time politician-bureaucrat in whom ambition, ability and substance fuse seamlessly."

To quote "Rumsfeld's Rules," a collection of aphorisms the Defense secretary has compiled over half a century: "Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership."

Or, more succinctly: "If you try to please everybody, somebody's not going to like it."

"Rumsfeld has a black belt in both proactivity and reactivity," said a former senior official. "[Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell is spending most of his time being reactive.... The result is that Rumsfeld often dominates. On a lot of issues, he's this administration's thought leader."

One of the reasons that folks don't really comprehend how thoroughly the Bush administration is trying to revolutionze the federal government is because bureaucratic infighting is hard to ubnderstand and nearly impossible to make sexy in the press. It is these reforms that matter in the long run, not things like the war in Iraq, yet few even know about the former while all are obsessed with the latter. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 17, 2003 7:58 PM