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Rumsfeld's war-on-terror memo

Below is the full text of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memo on the war on terror:

USA TODAY
October 16, 2003

TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:

We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.
USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban — Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.

With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.
Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the US?

Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?

Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions.

Do we need a new organization?

How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?
Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.

Does CIA need a new finding?

Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course?

What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday.
Thanks

Rummy's Parting Shot

By Jesse StanchakPosted Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006, at 6:51 AM ET
Everyone's top non-local story is a classified memo from outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, written just two days before his resignation, in which he admits that U.S. strategy in Iraq is in need of a "major adjustment." Rumsfeld lays out a number of possible plans to turn things around, including decreasing troop levels, setting benchmarks for progress with the Iraqi government, limiting aid to violent parts of the country and putting Iraqi political and religious leaders on the U.S. government payroll to win their loyalty.

The New York Times originally obtained the memo, posting the text on its site. The NYT points out that Rumsfeld is not endorsing any particular alternative, and he stresses that some of his suggestions are less desirable or "below the line." The NYT also notes that Rumsfeld's ideas are not particularly new, and many of them have been floated by White House critics for some time. The Los Angeles Times calls the memo "rambling" and characterizes the memo as "an admission of failure." The Washington Post questions the timing and significance of the memo's leak, given that it's just a list of options, devoid of real analysis— and given that Rumsfeld is now on his way out and his opinions are of greatly diminished importance. Which asks a bigger question: why is this front page news? Is it a window into how the White House is thinking now? Is it just a sign of how much the political tide has shifted? Is it a victory dance of sorts— the satisfaction of seeing a man known for his inflexibility admitting there may be better courses of action? Or maybe it's just the irony of Rumsfeld admitting that something had to change, just two days before that something turned out to be him.

The WP, building on yesterday's top story, reports that tensions are continuing to mount in Beirut, as Hezbollah-linked protestors call for the collapse of the Lebanon's western-backed government.

The NYT tries to unravel the past of Alexander V. Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died last week of radiation poisoning. The paper doesn't exactly get to the bottom of the story, but does come up with a few plausible reasons why the Kremlin would want their former agent dead.
From the prognostication department: inside, the WP takes a stab at guessing how history will judge President George W. Bush. The paper lets five historians have their say. TP will save you the trouble and just say that while there's a range of opinions expressed here, none of them are terribly generous.

Under the fold, the WP looks at the controversial decision to continue to fund Gulf War Syndrome research, despite a dearth of scientific research acknowledging the condition's existence. The research bill is currently at $316 million, with another $75 million in the pipeline.
After grim Rumsfeld memo, White House supports him

By Dave Moniz and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The United States has no yardstick for measuring progress in the war on terrorism, has not "yet made truly bold moves" in fighting al-Qaeda and other terror groups, and is in for a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a memo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent to top-ranking Defense officials last week.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush in Australia, reacted by voicing support for Rumsfeld. "That's exactly what a strong and capable secretary of defense like Secretary Rumsfeld should be doing," said McClellan.

"The president has always said it will require thinking differently. It's a different type of war," McClellan said.

Three members of Congress who met with Rumsfeld Wednesday morning said the defense secretary gave them copies of the memo and discussed it with them.

"He's asking the tough questions we all need to be asking," said Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas.

Despite upbeat statements by the Bush administration, the memo to Rumsfeld's top staff reveals significant doubts about progress in the struggle against terrorists. Rumsfeld says that "it is not possible" to transform the Pentagon quickly enough to effectively fight the anti-terror war and that a "new institution" might be necessary to do that. (Related item: Rumsfeld's memo)

The memo, which diverges sharply from Rumsfeld's mostly positive public comments, offers one of the most candid and sobering assessments to date of how top administration officials view the 2-year-old war on terrorism. It suggests that significant work remains and raises a number of probing questions but few detailed proposals.

"Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?" Rumsfeld asks in the Oct. 16 memo, which goes on to cite "mixed results" against al-Qaeda, "reasonable progress" tracking down top Iraqis and "somewhat slower progress" in apprehending Taliban leaders. "Is our current situation such that 'the harder we work, the behinder we get'? " he wrote.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita declined to comment specifically on the memo, but he said Rumsfeld's style is to "ask penetrating questions" to provoke candid discussion. "He's trying to keep a sense of urgency alive."
Among Rumsfeld's observations in the two-page memo:

The United States is "just getting started" in fighting the Iraq-based terror group Ansar Al-Islam.

The war is hugely expensive. "The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' cost of millions."

Postwar stabilization efforts are very difficult. "It is pretty clear the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."

The memo was sent to Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of Defense for policy.

Rumsfeld asks whether the Defense Department is moving fast enough to adapt to fighting terrorists and whether the United States should create a private foundation to entice radical Islamic schools to a "more moderate course." Rumsfeld says the schools, known as madrassas, may be churning out new terrorists faster than the United States can kill or capture them.
The memo is not a policy statement, but a tool for shaping internal discussion. It highlights a Rumsfeld trait that supporters say is one of his greatest strengths: a willingness to challenge subordinates to constantly reassess problems. The memo prods Rumsfeld's most senior advisers to think in new ways about the war on terrorism at a time when many are preoccupied with the 7-month-old war in Iraq.

In public, the Bush administration has been upbeat in describing the war on terrorism. Attorney General John Ashcroft has noted that two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leadership has been captured or killed.

Contributing: Kevin Johnson, Jim Drinkard and The Associated Press
Rumsfeld's Pentagon PapersHis leaked memo is the most astonishing document of this war so far.

By Fred KaplanPosted Thursday, Oct. 23, 2003, at 6:23 PM ET

Now he's got questions?

Donald Rumsfeld's war-on-terror memo—which was leaked to USA Today on Wednesday and picked up by the rest of the media, for the most part with a shrug, on Thursday—may be the most important, even stunning official document yet to come out of this war.

It puts the lie to the Bush administration's PR campaign that postwar Iraq is progressing nicely and that the media are exaggerating the setbacks. (If the media are exaggerating, this memo indicates, then so, too, is Secretary Rumsfeld.) It reads eerily like some internal mid-'60s document from The Pentagon Papers that spelled out how badly things were going in Vietnam (just as President Lyndon B. Johnson and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, were publicly proclaiming tunnel light and victories). To use a phrase coined during LBJ's tenure to describe the ever-widening fissure between rhetoric and reality, Rumsfeld's memo marks the first unconcealable eruption of a "credibility gap" in the wartime presidency of George W. Bush.

The two-page memo, dated Oct. 16, was addressed to Rumsfeld's top aides: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers; the vice chairman, Gen. Pete Pace; Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Here are some key passages:
"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."

"My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves [in the war on terrorism]."

"We are having mixed results with [tracking down] Al-Qaida. … With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started."

"It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution either within DoD or elsewhere."

"Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"

"Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."

"How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that 'the harder we work, the behinder we get'? ... Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course?"

Another question might be added to this list: Have you ever read a more pathetic federal document in your life? What is being stated here can be summed up as follows: We'll probably win the battle for Afghanistan and Iraq (or, more precisely, it's "pretty clear" we "can win" it, "in one way or another" after "a long, hard slog"), but we're losing the struggle for hearts and minds in the broader war against terrorism. Not only that, we don't know how to measure winning or losing, we don't have a plan for winning it, we don't know how to fashion a plan, and the bureaucratic agencies put in charge of waging this war and drawing up these plans may be inherently incapable of doing so.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, when asked Wednesday about the leaked memo, tried to put the best spin on it, extolling the quality of questions that Rumsfeld had posed in the memo. "That's exactly what a strong and capable secretary of defense like Secretary Rumsfeld should be doing," McClellan said with a remarkably straight face.
Maybe so, but it's a shame Rumsfeld and his crew—who, after all, have been running this operation—weren't asking such questions two years ago or five months ago or, for that matter, five weeks ago. His questions about the madrasahs—the schools where fundamentalist clerics indoctrinate the next generation of Muslims in anti-Western militancy—are truly cogent. But he seems unaware that his current style of neutralizing these institutions may be heightening their appeal in the region's most susceptible quarters. What to do about this cultural dimension of the war is a genuine dilemma, perhaps the crucial dilemma of our time. But Rumsfeld's bull-session recipes—creating a private foundation to entice moderation, drafting a "new finding" for the CIA (which means what—an executive order that broadens the scope of permissible assassinations?)—are thin brews.

What makes the Rumsfeld memo a major document, however, is that it confirms much of the news reporting coming out of Iraq—the same reporting that Bush officials (including Rumsfeld) have publicly derided as biased. NPR's Deborah Amos reported Wednesday morning that Donald Evans, Bush's secretary of commerce, came to Baghdad recently and admonished the American reporters there to start paying more attention to the good news about the occupation. "The American people have a far different view from the reality that we all know is here," Amos quoted Evans as saying, "You should report what we're really seeing." How long had Evans been in Iraq? About 24 hours. Where did he sleep that night? In Kuwait.

Rumsfeld's memo makes plain that our top officials suffer no illusions about the war. They are trying only to sell illusions to the rest of us. The leaking of Rumsfeld's memo puts a tailspin on the sales pitch.

Why the Rumsfeld Memo Matters

Thanks to USA Today, the public now knows some of what Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld really thinks of the war of terrorism. And thanks to Rumsfeld, the public knows that Bush is spinning when he discusses the war on terrorism.

The newspaper obtained an October 16, 2003, memo Rumsfeld wrote to four senior aides, in which he asked, "Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?" Rumsfeld also noted, "We are having mixed results with Al Qaida." The much-discussed memo was clearly intended to goose his top people--General Richard Myers, General Peter Pace, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith--to think boldly and imaginatively about the war at hand. But Rumsfeld observed, "Today, we lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." He wondered whether more terrorists are being produced on a daily basis than the number of terrorists being captured, killed, deterred or dissuaded by U.S. actions.

If Rumsfeld says there is no way to measure success or defeat in the campaign against terrorism, how can George W. Bush declare that he is winning the war? Yet while speaking on September 12 at Fort Stewart in Georgia, before soldiers and families of the Third Infantry Division, Bush said, "We're rolling back the terrorist threat, not on the fringes of its influence but at the heart of its power."

As Rumsfeld might put it, according to what metrics, Mr. President?
But the Rumsfeld memo is significant beyond its inadvertent truth-telling. Bush has repeatedly said that Iraq is "the central front" in the war on terrorism. Yet Rumsfeld's memo barely mentioned Iraq. Instead, Rumsfeld focused on combating terrorism at its roots, and he asked his aides to bring him ideas to counter the radical Islamic schools--the madrassas--that instruct students to hate the West. As he noted, "Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?" And he asked, "Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course?"

With these comments, Rumsfeld veered dangerously close to becoming one of those root-cause-symps who routinely are derided by hawks for arguing that the United States and other nations need to address the forces that fuel anti-Americanism overseas--in the Muslim world and elsewhere. The public disclosure of these views also made Rumsfeld's refusal to criticize Lt. General William Boykin appear all the more curious.

Boykin, the newly appointed deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, was recently caught by NBC News and The Los Angeles Times making comments that indicate he believes that Islam is a false religion--he called Allah "an idol"--and that he sees the war on terrorism as a spiritual conflict between "a Christian nation" and heathens.

In various press briefings, Rumsfeld has dodged addressing Boykin's remarks. At one point Rumsfeld said he had tried to watch a videotape of one of Boykin's church speeches, but he was unable to make out the words. (Boykin made most of his controversial statements from various church pulpits.) Wait a minute. The Pentagon can analyze communications intercepts and satellite imagery, but it cannot provide the defense secretary a clear rendition of a broadcast videotape?

Social conservatives have predictably rallied behind Boykin, trotting out the to-be-expected argument that the poor general is being assailed for his religious views. Now what if he had said something like, "According to my religious views, Judaism is a false religion"? Or, "my religion teaches that black people are inferior to white people"? Would Rumsfeld and Boykin's defenders have been as temperate in their response?

Writing in The Washington Times, conservative commentator Tony Blankley noted, "Whether or not American officials chose to call this a religious war, it is unambiguously clear that our enemy, bin Laden and the other terrorists, are motivated by Islamic religious fanaticism.....It shouldn't be a firing offense for the occasional American general to return the compliment." In other words, in this war (religious or not), the United States is entitled to be as extremist and intolerant as its murderous foes. Blankley fondly recounted that when Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on a cruiser off the coast of Newfoundland on August 9, 1941, they sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers" with the assembled sailors. Does he suggest that Boykin lead the Pentagon masses in singing that same number? Perhaps Bush and Rumsfeld can provide back-up vocals.
Boykin's prominent role in the administration's war on terrorism is certainly an impediment to any effort to encourage fundamentalist Islamic institutions to become more moderate. Rumsfeld ended his memo with a wide-open question: "What else should we be considering?" Here's a no-brainer: how about not appointing a Christian jihadist to be one of the leaders of an endeavor that aims to persuade Islamicists that the West is not so bad? Or is that too far outside the box?

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