July 1, 2021: Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense for Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George W. Bush, who presided over America’s Cold War strategies in the 1970s and, in the new world of terrorism decades later, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died on Tuesday at his home in Taos, N.M. He was 88.
The cause was multiple myeloma, said Keith Urbahn, a spokesman for the family.
A staunch ally of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who had been his protégé and friend for years, Mr. Rumsfeld was a combative infighter who seemed to relish conflicts as he challenged cabinet rivals, members of Congress and military orthodoxies. And he was widely regarded in his second tour as the most powerful defense secretary since Robert S McNamara during the Vietnam War.
Like his counterpart of long ago, Mr. Rumsfeld in Iraq waged a costly and divisive war that ultimately destroyed his political life and outlived his tenure by many years.
He sidestepped the issue of whether the Iraq war had diverted resources from the conflict in Afghanistan, leading to a Taliban resurgence there after the United States had invaded the country for harboring terrorists involved in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “It was precisely during the toughest period in the Iraq war that Afghanistan, with coalition help, took some of its most promising steps toward a free and better future,” he declared.
He worked for four presidents in a succession of personal triumphs, migrating from Capitol Hill to the Nixon administration’s Office of Economic Opportunity, to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as ambassador, and into the Ford White House as chief of staff. Between Pentagon stints, he was President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East and made fortunes as an executive with pharmaceutical, electronics and biotechnology companies.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the defense secretary had argued for the minimal force levels needed to achieve victories, an idea codified as the Rumsfeld Doctrine
Mr. Rumsfeld, who briefed Mr. Bush daily and was his chief spokesman on the war, came to embody what critics called the administration’s misjudgments and arrogance in a war gone wrong. He was accused of refusing to admit mistakes or change direction, of being slow to adopt counterinsurgency tactics, and of relying on a closed circle of hawkish advisers, including Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith.
While it was not up to Mr. Rumsfeld to fix troop strengths in Iraq, he was often blamed for keeping insufficient forces on the ground. And beyond his conduct of the war, many critics, including human rights groups and a bipartisan Senate committee, said he should face criminal charges for decisions that had led to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, and at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
In retrospect, military experts gave Mr. Rumsfeld high marks for his first term in the Pentagon, and for trying to modernize the military in his second. But they faulted his handling of the Iraq war, held him to account for the mistreatment of prisoners, and said he had alienated colleagues and the public with his imperious style.
He was an excellent student and became an Eagle Scout and an athlete. After graduating from New Trier High School in 1950, he attended Princeton on scholarships, majored in political science, was captain of the wrestling and football teams and graduated in 1954.
Mr. Rumsfeld joined the Navy in 1954 and became a jet fighter pilot and flight instructor. He left active service as a lieutenant (junior grade) in 1957, though he continued to fly and take administrative assignments in the Naval Reserve for many years.
His complex character, he was a creative and dedicated reformer to admirers, a vain and egotistical bully to detractors, was the subject of endless debate and analysis in public forums, newspaper and magazine articles, television documentaries and books.
In 2007, after leaving government service, Mr. Rumsfeld created the Rumsfeld Foundation to encourage public service with study fellowships and grants to support the growth of free political and economic systems abroad.
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