“When people criticized [Obama] for not going to Congress, criticizing the administration for not going to Congress, going to the United Nations and the Arab League instead, I kind of could understand why he didn’t,” Rumsfeld said. “If you went to Congress and asked for authorization to do something, you’d have to know what it was you wanted to do and you had to have decided before the fact with some precision and some clarity, as to what the mission would be.”

Were he still in his former Pentagon post, Rumsfeld said he would advise the commander-in-chief to weigh the various factors at play in the region.

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“When one talks about Libya or Tunisia, you have to also ask yourself this question: What I do there, in Libya or Tunisia, is going to have an effect elsewhere, and if these most important activities are going on in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states … one has to make sure that whatever you do in Libya is done with an awareness that it’s going to have an effect — either a favorable or an unfavorable — effect in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.”

As for whether the administration’s stated mission to protect the Libyan citizens with minimal involvement by the U.S. military, Rumsfeld said “only time will tell” whether such an objective can be achieved.

“If you’re going to put Americans at risk, militarily, it seems to me you have to have clarity in what you’re doing and be willing to do it in full. You have to be willing to do it well and to persevere and accomplish what it was you set out to do. And the reluctance and the ambivalence that we’ve seen reflected, I think, is probably worrisome for the people of the military.”