WASHINGTON (dpa) – President George W. Bush and his new defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, took office in January 2001 pledging to change the way the United States builds its military and thinks about national security in the 21st century.
Little did they know how soon they would be in the midst of a conflict that defied precedent in modern world history. On September 11, fewer than two dozen suicidal terrorists drove the country into the most unusual war it had ever fought, and put a pause in the defense secretary’s plans to shakeup the Pentagon.Even before the attacks, a series of mishaps and international crises plagued the U.S. military as Rumsfeld began looking for ways to “transform” the defense apparatus from a large, heavy Cold War force to a swift, light and lethal one: a U.S. submarine accidentally struck a Japanese fishing trawler in the Pacific, killing nine; a U.S. navy spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet off the Chinese coast; a misdirected bomb killed six U.S. and New Zealand military personnel on a training range in Kuwait.Nonetheless, when the United States launched its military campaign against Afghanistan on October 7, it struck with such speed and precision that public criticism of the Pentagon evaporated as the U.S. military showed its worth when it counted.Rumsfeld’s success at waging war in Afghanistan for the time being has overshadowed the problems he was facing at home before September 11, as he encountered stiff resistance to his transformation plans.Rumsfeld, 69, always steady and occasionally cocky, found himself struggling on a two-front domestic war.In the Pentagon, the military and its civilian bureaucracy was well entrenched, and when Rumsfeld locked the top brass out of his office, failing to convey his thinking to them or seek their input, military resistance dug in.The other front was on Capitol Hill, where members of Congress scrambled to protect from Rumsfeld’s axe lucrative weapons contracts in their districts. Disgruntled members also accused the defense secretary of keeping Congress in the dark about plans to cut spending on weapons that didn’t fit into Rumsfeld’s notion of the future.“Folks were ready to run Rumsfeld out of town,” said Jay Korman, a defense analyst at DFI International in Washington. “He was looking for change and (infuriated) a lot of people along the way.”There were rumours Rumsfeld would be the first of the Bush cabinet members to go, that he would resign or be fired. But all of that changed on September 11.Rumsfeld’s popularity shot up as the witty, sharp-tongued defense secretary became a regular visitor in American living rooms via televised press conferences.“He has gone from being reviled to revered without really changing at all,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Alexandria, Virginia. “The circumstances have changed but the man hasn’t at all.”Appearing regularly before the press, he explained the progress of U.S. military objectives geared toward rooting out terrorists and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.During a November press conference, Americans and the world got a taste of Rumsfeld’s direct way of speaking, something his friends and associates had been familiar with for years.“In other American wars, enemy commanders have come to doubt the wisdom of taking on the strength and power of this nation and the resolve of her people,” he said. “I expect that somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan there’s a terrorist leader who is at this moment considering precisely the same thing.”When the United States began dropping bombs in Afghanistan, the Taliban held its positions for the initial weeks of the campaign, but intensified and more precise bombing allowed the opposition Northern Alliance to quickly drive the extremist regime from power.Rumsfeld played an unusually large role for a defense secretary in planning the military assault, pushing for the quick ground deployment of special forces to better spot targets for U.S. bombs.The relatively quick defeat of the Taliban allowed Afghan opposition fighters, and U.S. and British commandoes, to move in on alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.But while the September 11 attacks forced Rumsfeld and Bush to shift gears, by November the two leaders were once again pushing their pre-war agenda. Rumsfeld established a transformation office in the Pentagon.He and the president moved on plans to build a missile defense shield – even though a group of hijackers showed that box cutters used by hijackers were a more likely weapon than nuclear warheads launched by a rogue state.On December 13, in pursuit of his missile defense system, Bush announced he would scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty the United States signed with the Soviet Union over the objections of Russia, China, NATO allies and politicians at home.The war in Afghanistan may have put many of the problematic issues faced by Rumsfeld and the Pentagon in the closet, out of public purview, but it’s not clear how long the newfound honeymoon between Rumsfeld, the military brass and Congress will last.Despite the successes in Afghanistan, congressional members and the military will likely again resist the painful changes Rumsfeld may initiate.“He still has the same priorities,” said the defense analyst Thompson, who didn’t rule out the possibility Rumsfeld might still resign.“Once al-Qaeda and the Taliban are contained as a threat we’ll find that many of the underlying tensions in the Pentagon remain. The resistance in the military and in Congress remains as strong today as when he arrived.”
