Rumsfeld, Reconsidered

Jamie Fly makes several salient points about his former boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in the course of reviewing Bradley Graham's new biography. This struck me as the most pertinent for current events:

On the issue that caused Rumsfeld’s downfall — Iraq — By His Own Rules does not break much new ground, but it does provide useful context. The book makes clear that Rumsfeld’s supposed lack of planning for the postwar period needs to be viewed through the prism of his longtime interests in cutting costs and keeping American military deployments to a minimum. Rumsfeld had no interest in maintaining a significant troop presence in Iraq after Baghdad fell, and even less interest in establishing a flourishing democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

What is amazing is that the U.S. government as a whole did not resolve its contradictory opinions prior to the invasion. It is doubtful that Rumsfeld hid his views from his interagency counterparts.

I have made this point before, that Rumsfeld's disinclination toward nation building put him out of step in an administration that had clearly jettisoned any campaign skepticism it expressed about the proper use of American power. But I wonder if the "prism" through which we're to understand the post war debacle in Iraq is really Secretary Rumsfeld's aversion to military deployments. After all, how averse could he be if he endorsed the invasion in the first place?