Don Rumsfeld, Radical for our Time: The defense secretary has ushered in a new era, whose contours we have barely glimpsed

National Review, May 5, 2003 by Victor Davis Hanson

That at a robust 70 Rumsfeld doesn't care to flatter or network gives him enormous credibility -- and an affinity for bringing in bright, independent people like Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Myers without fear or jealousy. He is neither a young, ambitious McNamara, swept up in the culture of the best and brightest, nor a worn-out Stanton. Add that his wealth of experience -- including being under attack in Beirut (in 1983, when he was President Reagan's Mideast envoy) and at the Pentagon (on 9/11) -- in part explains why he has been so often right: about the need for an ABM program, about intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, and about deployments abroad to battle al-Qaeda operatives from the Philippines to Yemen. As a Thucydidean, he accepts the role of power; he knows that until the nature of man changes, regimes in the Middle East will respect our force as much as our values.

But there is a final wild card at play, not just where Rumsfeld is concerned but in the administration as a whole. Rumsfeld, as both a Princeton graduate and a naval pilot, is familiar with -- but neither envious nor in awe of -- the Eastern elite that so dominates our universities, government, and media. Like Bush, Cheney, and Rice, who have all either attended or taught at top schools, the former Illinois congressman acknowledges the intellectual richness of our great universities, but nevertheless seems more at ease with the sounder practical judgment of Middle America -- and more than willing to bristle and snap at what he perceives as an overly cynical and skeptical cadre of brainy but foolish people.

His resume reads like a counter-dossier to the 1960s and 1970s. Even his speech -- with its "by golly"'s and "my goodness"'s -- proclaims that the 1950s can endure, oblivious to the chaos: "I've always enjoyed life, no matter what I'm doing. I like people and I like ideas, and I've got a lot of energy, fortunately."

What does the future hold for Rumsfeld himself, and for our new high- tech military? I imagine he will probably retire at the conclusion of President Bush's first administration, once the war on terror that he has fought so successfully has wound down. His legacy will be a far more sophisticated, more motivated armed force, staffed by confident, well-spoken officers who lead a spirited cross section of American youth. The very idea of entirely separate and feuding branches of the military is coming to a close, as the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marines all -- at times -- both fly and fight on the ground, under synchronized command. War itself is undergoing a moral reappraisal, as military conflict is shown to save more lives than allowing mass murderers -- Milosevic, the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein -- to ply their trade of death without consequences.

Rumsfeld didn't create this renaissance in a mere two years. But at a time of war and uncertainty, he did give those with such missionary zeal and vision the confidence and support they needed to come forward out of the halls of the Pentagon to pursue their reforms. And he did bring back a confidence that militaries ultimately exist not just to launch cruise missiles, but to fight -- and to win. And for that alone we are in debt to this controversial, opinionated man, in ways that will not be fully understood for years to come.