Donald Rumsfeld, the colorful, eloquent, insightful, and energetic Defense Secretary, has become a national hero for his expert handling of the war on terror — and the whipping boy of defeatist media jackals looking for any excuse to declare a “quagmire.” Now “Rumsfeld’s War” shows you this great man’s true measure. It takes you inside Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, detailing the far-sighted, courageous decisions he has made to enable our military to fight this most unconventional of wars effectively.
Rumsfeld’s War reveals how the Secretary of Defense has been at the center of global counterterrorism operations from their beginning. In fact, he saw a major terrorist attack on American soil coming long before 9/11. When terrorists crashed a plane into the Pentagon, he was there — helping carry the wounded to safety. He was the first Bush White House official to break with Bill Clinton’s policy and call the struggle against terrorism a war, instead of a law enforcement issue. Throughout the war on terror he has worked fourteen hours a day, directing armies overseas, fighting interior bureaucratic battles, and working to transform America’s armed forces to make sure that an attack like 9/11 never happens again.
Rowan Scarborough, veteran national security reporter for the Washington Times, here recounts heated conflicts Rumsfeld has had with other Bush Administration officials (as well as entrenched Pentagon bureaucrats) over crucial elements of our response to terrorism. He even gives details of Rumsfeld’s tangles with generals and foreign leaders over the most effective response to terror. This book traces the immense extent of Rumsfeld’s labors and his influence, showing how he has almost single-handedly reconfigured key components of our military response: the role of special operations forces, our reaction to hostage-takers, our treatment of captured al Qaeda terrorists, and even the wartime chain of command.
Many of Rumsfeld’s hard-won victories are revealed here for the first time: Scarborough interviewed scores of Rumsfeld’s friends and colleagues, including former President Gerald Ford, renowned economist Arthur Laffer, and Newt Gingrich. He also provides details of some highly secretive Pentagon operations — carried out under Rumsfeld’s supervision by groups that most Americans don’t even know exist. Scarborough even offers an enlightening historical long view, comparing Rumsfeld’s decisiveness and willingness to act to the Clinton Administration’s lassitude, distraction, and wrongheadedness during al Qaeda’s astonishingly rapid rise in the 1990s. He shows that Rumsfeld saw the importance of this present conflict early on, when he said shortly before Kabul surrendered: “I firmly believe that this is the most important tasking the U.S. military has been handed since the Second World War. And what’s at stake here is no less than our freedom to exist as an American people. So there’s no option but success.” Among Rowan Scarborough’s revelations:
Scarborough concludes that history will surely judge Rumsfeld as “one of America’s most important defense leaders.” Rumsfeld’s War reveals why — and how much of the bold new military strategy and vision that we are implementing now in the war on terror we owe to one man: Donald Rumsfeld.
Tags: Rowan Scarborough, Rumsfeld's War
Rowan Scarborough has covered the Pentagon for the Washington Times for fifteen years and is one of the most respected––and […] More about Rowan Scarborough.
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