Rumsfeld and Romney

I watched a TV program this afternoon about the American strategy for the Middle East - principally Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - during the post-9/11 Bush presidency. There were the usual players in the program, American and Arab and Muslim. But the commentary, the participant/witnesses to the events, and indeed the documentary itself, were French. As you might imagine, if you recall the French leadership of the opposition at the UN Security Council meeting deciding whether to support the US Resolution to attack the Saddam Hussein Iraqi regime, the documentary was not favorable to the American strategy after 9/11. Nothing new there. But, the documentary included a clip of Donald Rumsfeld, while he was still Secretary of Defense, explaining why America took the offensive in the Middle East in going after al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Rumsfeld said that the United States had been attacked once on its own soil and the goal was that it would never happen again. He then explained that for this to be assured, the only possible strategy was to go after the terrorists on their home ground and to destabilize them so badly that they would have little time or opportunity to plan a second attack in the US. Then came the magic word..."pre-emptive"...to describe this approach. Was it Rumsfeld's idea...or Vice President Cheney's...or the American military general staff's? I don't know. But what I do know is that it worked. Yes, the US spent vast sums of money, sacrificed many of its young men and women, and made many Muslim, European and Arab enemies. But, it worked. And for the past four years - since Barak Obama was elected President - we have seen that sense of pre-emption erode into "leading from behind" to describe the Obama approach to keeping America safe from terrorist attack. Rumsfeld - I've always thought of him as a genius with words and a brilliant tactician. But, military strategy? I always thought of Cheney in that role. Perhaps Rumsfeld was a strategist, too? Or THE military strategist? Could it be that Dick Cheney, behind the scenes, devoted himself to political strategy? That was, after all, his strong point. We may never know. But it will be interesting to see how much of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld era approach Mitt Romney takes to the presidential debate on foreign policy.