Beware Rumsfeld's Snow Job

The former defense secretary's revisionist op-ed.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008, at 5:55 PM ET

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Donald Rumsfeld is writing his memoirs, and if his op-ed in the Nov. 23 New York Times is any preview, it should be a classic of self-serving revisionism.

On the surface, the former defense secretary's piece seems to be a warning—sound, if unoriginal—that merely sending more troops to Afghanistan won't fix that country's problems or win the war.

But his real intent is clearly to justify his own policies on the war in Iraq, to refute the (properly) widespread idea that he committed serious errors, and even more to deny that he held the views that he actually did hold.