Victory Will Come as in Cold War, Rumsfeld Predicts

ELI LAKE
NY Sun
Tuesday November 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — President Bush's first secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, architect of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, says the military alone cannot win the war against global jihad.

In a phone interview on Saturday with The New York Sun, Mr. Rumsfeld said the current war is similar to the Cold War, and that America's victory depends on assisting moderate Muslims against extremists and on reforming the domestic and international institutions forged after World War II.

"The concept of victory in this struggle will not be a signing ceremony aboard a ship like the USS Missouri. It will be much more like the Cold War, where, over time, the struggle that is taking place between violent extremists who want to impose their will on the rest of the world, re-establish a caliphate, and require others to live lives that fit their idea of how lives ought to be lived ... that they lose and the moderates who do not want to impose their will on other people, the people who do not want to murder people, cutting off their heads and blowing people up, that struggle will result in the extremists being reduced in numbers and opportunity and support and the people who oppose extremists growing in numbers and being successful in defeating them," he said.

Shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, Mr. Rumsfeld described victory as a moment when Americans feel safe. Throughout the Bush administration, the concept of victory has evolved from rolling up networks for Al Qaeda and other terrorists and depriving them of safe havens to the outcome in a battle within Islam between those Muslims who seek war with the West and those who don't. When asked to elaborate Saturday, Mr. Rumsfeld said America's task primarily was "to help those people opposing the extremists, to put pressure on the extremists." But he made sure to say, "The idea that you can ignore these enemies or live and let live or find some accommodation of peaceful existence or detente is just erroneous, it can't be done."

Some of these thoughts have been sketched out in internal memos from Mr. Rumsfeld made public last month by the Washington Post. Since resigning from the Bush administration following the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006, Mr. Rumsfeld has kept a low profile. In recent books about the Bush administration, he is portrayed as a stubborn cold warrior and hardliner. Among Democrats he has come under special criticism for approving the first round of interrogation procedures for terrorist detainees, procedures that have since been modified. A group of former generals in 2006 began calling for his resignation on the grounds that the war in Iraq was breaking the Army. Even some voices on the right, from outlets like the Weekly Standard, have called for his resignation out of frustration that he sent too few troops to Iraq.

Full article here.