NYT: Op/Ed - Post-Election Job Number One - Get Rid Of Rumsfeld

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/opinion/08wed1.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1162963931-a4BYCbrwmD0MNdC4lmp7RQ

Editorial
Post-Election Job Number One

Published: November 8, 2006
Whatever this election accomplished, it did nothing to end the rancor and distrust that define current American politics. Yet, as the campaign went on (and on) there was one issue on which people from both parties appeared to be finding common ground: Donald Rumsfeld has to go.

While Democrats have been demanding a new secretary of defense for a long time, Republicans — worried about re-election as well as the course of the war — began to join the outcry this fall. Some made it part of their campaign mantras. Many others have been complaining in quiet about Mr. Rumsfeld’s continued job security. Even people who are strong supporters of the continued presence of American troops in Iraq acknowledge that there needs to be a change.

It’s possible that no one could have turned the invasion into a success, given the fissures in Iraqi society that the fall of Saddam Hussein have exposed. But we will never know, since the shortage of American troops and the lack of postwar planning made disaster inevitable. Mr. Rumsfeld deserves to go simply because he has failed at his job. Denying that reality is presumably why the president is so bent on keeping him.

Still, at a time when even the Bush administration admits the need for a change of tactics, it should be easy to see that a new team at the Defense Department would be better equipped to rethink the way the war is being conducted. The president has a degree in business. He should understand how difficult it is for managers to come up with creative ways of getting out of problems that their ideas created in the first place.

Before he presided over the Iraq invasion, Mr. Rumsfeld promised that as secretary of defense he was going to transform America’s military so it was prepared to fight the conflicts of the 21st century. Mr. Bush has cited the progress being made on that front as one of the reasons he wants Mr. Rumsfeld to stay. But — in a familiar pattern for this administration — the changes have been more rhetorical than real.

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