Known and Unknown (86 page)

While those of us in the Bush administration did not engage in the debate needed to identify the enemy's ideology, we did at least recognize that the challenge we faced was fundamentally ideological. “The important point is that what we face is an ideologically-based challenge,” I wrote in 2004, when we were engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan. “Radical Islamists may be centered in the Middle East, but their reach is worldwide and their goals are global.” My memo continued:

One of the three components of the strategy we developed in the months after 9/11 addressed how to counter the enemy's ideology. We knew that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would not end Islamist terrorism and, in fact, in the short term could give the enemy opportunities to attract more recruits and cite the inevitable casualties as proof that the United States was warring against Islam. As long as madrassas and mosques from Jakarta to Hamburg preached Islamism and justified terrorism in its service, military action could make only limited headway. After circulating our 2005 national defense strategy, the State Department objected to the inclusion of “countering ideological support” as a goal.
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While some in the administration recognized the problem, there was never any resolution and as a result we are not able to fashion and execute a plan to confront it effectively.

I favored a major effort to win over those Muslims who were sitting on the fence—those not supporting al-Qaida but who were not actively opposing the extremists either. Our extremist enemies did not terrorize only Westerners, but their fellow Muslims. I thought we needed a campaign to win over friends and allies in the Muslim world and “mobilize moderate Muslims,” as I argued in July 2005.
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We needed to tell the truth about the Islamist extremists—about their brutality, injustice, and totalitarian political ambitions. The best way to communicate that message was not for American political leaders to do it, but to find ways to get more Muslims around the world publicly speaking out against them. But the United States and other Western countries have been notably unsuccessful in encouraging Muslim political, religious, and educational leaders to take a stand against Islamism and the preaching of violence and terror.

This failure has been a serious deficiency in the West's struggle against the extremists. Our inability to compete in the battle of ideas and to counter our enemies' ideology has invited them to focus on communicating through the media, where they have enjoyed consistent and sustained success. This is the essence of asymmetric warfare. Instead of engaging our military forces, they engage us where we and all democracies are most vulnerable: our public will and staying power. They seek to demoralize free people and cause their nations to withdraw from the world into isolationism.

Our enemies know that a single attack cannot break our will. They also know that a single attack, skillfully handled, with accompanying grisly pictures and video, can affect public opinion dramatically and quickly. In Iraq and Afghanistan our enemies' goal was to sour U.S. public opinion on the wars and cause members of Congress to do what the enemy fighters could not do: force the U.S. military to stop fighting. They worked to inflict at least a few casualties on us every day, providing more negative images and headlines for the next news cycle. They hope to achieve what they have sought since they successfully defeated the Soviet empire in Afghanistan: the humiliation of another superpower. They almost achieved exactly that in 2007, when Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid pushed to cut funding for the Iraq war. Their efforts, if successful, would have led to precisely the kind of rout the enemy hoped for—the kind I remembered all too well from the difficult days in the spring of 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War.

Though I disagreed with those who argued to end our efforts in Iraq abruptly, I continue to believe that military missions undertaken by the United States need to be realistic in intent and limited in scope. Strategy and statesmanship require recognizing and understanding that our nation's capabilities are finite. Further, the American public is not tolerant of the long-term involvement of U.S. forces in combat. Wars threaten to change free societies, which is why it is difficult for democracies to wage prolonged bloody conflicts. This laudable aversion to war makes it all the more challenging when U.S. military efforts are required and must be sustained.

For a time, a popular maxim about Iraq was “If you break it, you own it.” But to be clear, the United States did not “break” Iraq. It was broken by a dictator who over twenty-five years ran his country into the ground. Nor did the United States break Afghanistan, a land that had been broken, at least by Western standards, for centuries. We can encourage, assist, and advise, but we should not take on the responsibility as the prime actor. Local Afghans and Iraqis know far better than we do how to form and at what pace to evolve their societies. Solving corruption in Afghanistan or building a secular democracy in the Middle East are not America's problems to tackle. They are not our broken societies to fix.

The futures of Afghanistan and Iraq have yet to be decided, and circumstances could still deteriorate. Afghans, Iraqis, and their elected leaders may make wrong choices in the years ahead and lose some of the hard-won gains of the U.S. military. Nonetheless, it must be said that America has given them a chance at success. Because of American sacrifice, they have been given the opportunity to build better, more secure, more prosperous, and freer societies than they ever knew under the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. They are now challenged with the responsibilities of sustaining their free societies, just as Americans are responsible for sustaining ours.

 

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n the late 1970s, after two decades in government and my early years in business, Joyce and I had saved enough to purchase a small place in El Prado, New Mexico, just north of Taos, then a sleepy town of a few thousand people—a haven for artists, skiers, self-described free spirits, and graying hippies. For decades it had been a crossroads of Hispanic, Indian, and Western cultures, combining the millennia-old traditions of the original inhabitants of the continent with the pioneering spirit of the settlers who first headed West.

Next to our farm is the Taos Pueblo, thought to be the oldest, continuously inhabited community in North America. The Native American tribe that founded it has made the area its home for more than a thousand years, centuries before the first Europeans set sail for the New World and well before a Declaration of Independence pitted thirteen colonies against an empire. Few other places in America serve as a more vivid reminder of how young our nation is, which for me only makes even more miraculous what has been achieved in its short existence. When I am in New Mexico and see the majestic landscape and endless blue skies, I sense what this great land of ours represents: promise, possibility, and renewal.

A few years after New Mexico became part of U.S. territory, the American Civil War began. During that conflict, deep divisions between those loyal to the North and South led to skirmishes in the area, including efforts by Confederate sympathizers to take down the American flag flying over the Taos Plaza. Eventually, a group of men, including the legendary frontiersman Kit Carson, resolved to nail the Union flag to a tall wooden pole, where it was kept under twenty-four-hour watch. Though federal regulations prevented municipalities from flying the Stars and Stripes after sundown, Congress passed a special law authorizing Taos to be the first city in the nation allowed to fly the flag day and night. And there the flag has flown ever since, through times of war, economic despair, disease, and disaster—in the cruelest of times as well as the best of times.

Our still-young country has withstood tragedies and trauma of unimagined scope. And yet it has continued to thrive, thanks to proud and resilient citizens and leaders from both political parties who have done their best to guide the nation. “If those young Americans who have the advantage of education, perspective, and self-discipline do not participate to the fullest extent of their ability,” Adlai Stevenson once said, “America will stumble, and if America stumbles the world falls.” He warned, “For the power, for good or evil, of this American political organization is virtually beyond measurement. The decisions which it makes, the uses to which it devotes its immense resources, the leadership which it provides on moral as well as material questions, all appear likely to determine the fate of the modern world.”
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Those words remain as true and profound today as when I first heard them at my senior class banquet at Princeton University in 1954.

Those who have been privileged to serve our country have been the guardians of one of the greatest achievements of mankind. Our United States of America, at once imperfect and extraordinary, has offered more opportunity and improved more lives, both at home and throughout the world, than any other nation in history. In writing this book I have looked back over a life enriched beyond measure by those opportunities. I hope readers will come away with a conviction that service to America is an obligation to be fulfilled, as well as an honor to be embraced.

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his book has been four years in the making. To help organize its writing, as well as to put order into my voluminous documentary record and establish the supporting website, I have relied on an extraordinary team of individuals. The core group was headed by Keith Urbahn, my chief of staff and a Navy reserve intelligence officer, who has taken on historical, creative, and managerial responsibilities well beyond his years. Victoria Coates brought an academic perspective and a relentless insistence on documentation and precision—invaluable assistance from an art historian, of all things. Matt Latimer, an attorney and former Pentagon and White House speechwriter, contributed not only his considerable knowledge and talent but also his boundless interest in Richard M. Nixon.

This group was ably supported by our outstanding staff led by our office manager, Linda Figura. Aliza Kwiatek was an intrepid and meticulous fact checker. Will Cappelletti, Pratik Chougule, and Brice Long, along with Sarah Conant, Steve Duggan, Elizabeth Goss, Lisa Ricks, and Kailey Walczak, did yeoman's duty transcribing the seemingly endless streams of dictation and interviews and fielding requests for illustrations and documents. Nancy Pardo, my longtime and valued assistant in Chicago, has undertaken hundreds of hours of dictation transcription and been an all-around personal oracle. The publisher at Sentinel, Adrian Zackheim and his associates, provided experienced advice, as did Patti Pirooz and John McElroy in my reading of the audio version. Bob Barnett's unique perspective on the entire process has proved invaluable.

I have benefited from a group of stalwart if painfully honest readers, including Pete Biester, Steve Cambone, Torie Clarke, Larry Di Rita, Doug Feith, Anne Gardner, Admiral Ed Giambastiani, and Jean Edward Smith.

I also consulted directly with associates who participated in many of the events I describe, so that I could take into account their distinct perspectives as well. They include some of the most honorable and patriotic men I've had the privilege of serving alongside—men who dedicated their careers to serving our nation in the uniform of the U.S. military:

They also include other colleagues, patriots, and friends who have served their country in many ways:

One drawback to living so long is that there are friends and colleagues who are no longer with us. I first considered writing a book in the 1990s in consultation with John Robson, a friend of more than fifty years. While John died before this iteration of the project was launched, his guidance and recommendations have stayed with me—particularly his knack for getting me to look at issues from different viewpoints and his admonition to keep living life to the fullest regardless of age or infirmity. Three other friends stand out who were with us at the outset of this project but were not able to see the final product: Peter Rodman, who encouraged me to make full use of my archival material; Bill Safire, who shared his friendship and superb writing expertise; and Bob Goldwin, who was the same intellectual sounding board he had been during the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Thanks are also due to Margaret McAleer, John Haynes, and the staff of the Library of Congress, where the bulk of my papers are on deposit. Bob Storer of the Defense Department's Washington Headquarters Services has been an invaluable help with my DoD records. I also appreciate the contributions of David Horrocks and Bill McNitt and the staff at the Gerald R. Ford Library as well as assistance from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, the Richard M. Nixon Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Hume Kennerly contributed not only the front and back jackets of this book, but also unpublished photographs for the illustration sections.

Finally, I want to acknowledge my great fortune in having a family that has been a source of encouragement and inspiration: my two loving parents, George and Jeannette Rumsfeld, and my sister, Joan Ramsay. I am most of all indebted to the person to whom this memoir is dedicated. As well as her love, Joyce has brought insight, grace, and her trademark joy to my life for our now more than fifty-six years together. She and our three children, Valerie, Marcy, and Nick, have been with me every step of the way with their support and always with good-humored perspective. This memoir is, after all, their story as well as mine.

Even given the hundreds of hours of consultation, research, and review as well as the extensive documentation employed, I recognize it is inevitable that some errors have crept into a book of this scale. As regrettable as it is to accept this human reality, the responsibility for them is mine.

My proceeds from the project will go to the programs my foundation supports for the men and women in uniform, including the wounded and their families. If this book does nothing else but reflect my respect and appreciation for them, that will be enough.