Waiting for Donald Rumsfeld to apologize.
The parallels between Rumsfeld and McNamara are strong — up to a point. Both men took charge of the Pentagon bent on exercising greater civilian control over the military. Both were determined to transform the military bureaucracy into a more efficient, more adaptable organization. And both were perceived as arrogant, abrasive and impatient.
But where the two differed profoundly was in how they regarded their tenures in the end. While McNamara, even before he left office, started to doubt the purpose of the Vietnam War and the prospect of victory, Rumsfeld has never appeared to waver in the conviction that invading Iraq was the right thing to do and that the U.S. war plan was sound. When I pressed him, during a final interview for my recently published biography, on whether he had any regrets about his conduct of the war, he dismissed the question as a favorite press query unworthy of reply.
Rumsfeld remains filled with a bitter sense that perceptions of the war and of his role in it have been badly distorted by one-sided media coverage, much of it based, in his view, on self-serving accounts by State Department and National Security Council officials.
4,322 instruments of American foreign policy could not be reached for comment.
Update: Speaking of dancing snowflakes ( Rumsfelds famed memo’s), Stephen Walt takes issue with the popular dogma on the surge. Fox Fallon won’t be getting any apologies anytime soon either.